


NFWMB

by Sacred_Trickster (The_Divine_Fool)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Art, Character Study, Chickens, Drama, Fix-It, Gay Twist Endings, Humor, Illustrations, M/M, Psychological, Storytelling, Tea Parties, Worldbuilding, bad touches, get your brotein, ninja bling, small gods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:18:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 104,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/pseuds/Sacred_Trickster
Summary: “This guy saved me from a giantrock-- “ Obito boasted, seizing the Copy Nin around the neck. “He’s basically in love with me.”in which Obito doesn't 'die' and the ultimate broship begins





	1. dumb days

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks  
> i am messing soo much with the timeline on this one forgive me --  
> i didnt want to do so much building but i ended up giving the city a little more shape than i intended to  
> for this little ficaroonie
> 
> ...if they have cameras in the naruto world like do they have bicycles
> 
> its such a mish mosh of modern and feudal technology, i started to feel like anything goes --  
> sorry for the long note
> 
> uhh
> 
> here we go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: check the links at the start of each chapter for tunes! (you might have to adjust your settings to let media show up -- not a must but it enhances some chapters imho)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

[dumb days](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/dumb-days?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

It was a cold day in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. 

Aside from a significant rainy season following autumn, weather in the Fire capital was famously mild. Mild enough for tourists and travellers to nickname Konoha the city of _eternal spring_ \-- not always in good humor. Due to the temperate climate, most buildings were constructed from wood, mixed concrete, brick or stone excavated from the quarry outside of town, and with the exception of a few government offices -- no insulation, no central air, and very little compassion for the human condition. Rent for a private space to breathe in the city was roughly the cost of a feudal compound and three decent-looking concubine in the outskirts of the Fire Country, which partly explained why at the end of each month, residents of the tall apartment buildings from 64st all the way to 116th Street lit newspaper clippings on fire and threw them blazing from their windows, humming _how we gonna pay_ and sharing their personal grievances loudly with the night.

According to the Hokage’s Public Liaison, these outbursts were seen as largely theatrical.

Anyway, spring was fickle and for every few mild days there came a very crispy one, gray from dawn to dusk and pissy with passing whip-lashes of rain.

During the daylight hours 116th Street was a long loop of short-order restaurants and foreign cafes, overpriced tourist stops and tucked-away oddities that delighted students from the Academy, who often rode or walked the loop in the morning and afternoon before classes, taking advantage of the opportunistic fruit vendors set up outside the gates to campus. Green and yellow taxis regularly careened around the loop between bars and the nearby hostel, but traffic generally tapered off in the late afternoons, leaving students free to walk along 116th back to the Academy housing projects.

At sunset, 116th Street became impassable by car as licensed merchants and common villagers alike gathered to peddle their wares: among them local crafts like embroidered sachets and necklaces made from peach pits, and then more exotic offerings -- frilled red lizards from the nearby Sand, shark-toothed wooden masks blessed and painted to frighten the Stranger god, hand-carved seals in jade and alabaster, cursed dog teeth, fans with serrated steel edges, ornamental baby shoes for lost little ones -- anything and everything could change hands in a single night on the Loop.

The night market was not strictly legal, and occasionally the Head of the Hokage’s Public Security Bureau sent a task force of masked shinobi to break up the event; they trashed tables, stole and destroyed wares, and sometimes made arrests -- and for a while after, the Loop went quiet. Until one night, it would start up again, all at once, and come sunrise everyone would know the market was back from the smoky charcoal and vegetable oil aroma clinging to the morning mist, evidence of street food left lingering in storm drains and alleyways -- and frequently caught in the claws of the city’s significant population of stray cats. 

The hour was already late and sunset stretched over the dark streets with long golden claws, slicing up the shadows of the day for just a short time before night fell. 

Around the corner from the Academy, a fruit stand was selling chestnuts in shell, oiled and churned together in large roasting urns. The fragrance was so tempting, Saburo stopped and bought a bag, shoving his camera in his armpit to flash four fingers at the vendor while he dug in his pocket for change. She didn’t seem to like his money or his request but she measured out four ounces of chestnuts and not a tenth more, and handed them over in an oil-spotted paper bag. He could’ve done without the stink eye but she didn’t chase him down the street or anything, so Saburo didn’t regret it.

Until he remembered his damn newspaper assignment, and his hard-ass editor, and the way the entire staff snubbed his ideas one after the other today. He’d thought the Konoha rent riots at the end of every month were worth a feature in the school paper -- an editorial, at least -- but no, Haruhi-san shot it down; the riots are only _theatrical_ , she said. So if that idea didn’t send her then maybe a column on the night market in the arts and entertainment section would do -- but no, hell no, Saburo, that’s been _done_ before. 

His last pitch was a half-hearted swing at doing a day-in-the-life special on Konoha’s strays, and that one actually garnered some interest from the staff. The only reason it didn’t work out was Haruhi-san thought I _zumi_ would write it better. With all his ideas either shot up or kidnapped, Saburo was the one left standing around at the meeting looking stupid with nothing to pitch. 

He decided to skip afternoon physical training to wander the Loop instead, and he still didn’t regret it -- though now his pockets were feeling light, and the only shots he’d taken in two hours were of the man without arms painting scriptures with his toes for small change, and a fat orange tabby eating goat off a stick. He thought maybe they went together, somehow.

Saburo was still panning the busy sunset loop in resignation when two vaguely familiar figures caught his eye on the raised walkway outside the smoke shop. He abruptly choked on a dry petal of nut skin and hammered his chest to shake it loose, but it was a bad one and Saburo coughed heartily, bent over his knees clutching the paper bag to his ribs -- looking mad weak, basically. He reflected on how his mother didn’t ever ask to go out with him, and thought it was probably because he would cramp _her_ style. 

Saburo recovered soon enough, and squinted through unshed tears at the upperclassmen in the distance.

Not upperclassmen exactly, he corrected himself, since both Hatake and the Uchiha boy had graduated and become genin years ago. Not only that, Hatake had joined _ANBU_ and become a captain -- which was pretty much as elite as you got, in Konoha. Anybody who didn’t want to be him wanted to bang him; Hatake’s mask was almost more famous than his hidden face. And just for those reasons, Kakashi was close to godly for a thirteen-year-old to behold.

Saburo knew about as much about Uchiha Obito as the rest of the Academy. There’s nothing so tantalizing to homestuck shinobi as confidential mission reports and narratives about juicy injuries -- and since the accident that took Obito out of service was both, details spread like wildfire through the shinobi ranks. It wasn’t long before every class in his year at the Academy had some idea what happened. The skeleton of it, Saburo gathered, went like this: Namikaze Minato and his team were on a mission to the Kannabi Bridge when they encountered Iwa nin resistance. Obito is crushed in an attack that caused a cave to collapse. Dude plucks out one of his eyes, transfers it to Hatake with the help of their teammate Nohara Rin, and here’s where it gets fuzzy. With a new Sharingan eye Kakashi reportedly _blows_ up the rock with a sword made of lightning, thereby freeing his teammate from the rubble and saving him almost certain death from crush syndrome -- and probably impregnating someone nearby. So the story goes. But Obito was already in a coma, and would stay that way for _three years_.

A lot can happen in three years. 

The orphaned Uchiha woke up sixteen days into autumn and any article in any newspaper published about the one-eyed miracle hero guy was written without any direct quotes and definitely without his blessing. He discharged himself from the hospital on the fifth day, according to his attending nurse, and Saburo didn’t know when exactly news of the Kyuubi, his sensei, and teammate Rin reached Obito -- but he knew the young shinobi petitioned to be returned to active duty only ten days after returning to consciousness dangerously malnourished and with limited vision in his remaining eye. Saburo knew there wasn’t any textbook guide to piecing your world back together. He could only imagine how hard it must have been to assemble a normal picture from unrecognizable fragments. If it were him personally, Saburo thought, he would lean on familiar things. Training. Missions. Find some solid ground in the chaos. 

If he could get an exclusive from these two, he’d get his feature. Heck, he’d get his own goddamn column, and then everyone else would be standing around at the meetings looking stupid with nothing but cat stories to pitch. The elusive white-haired ANBU prodigy was promising enough, but the broke-heart recovery story standing next to him? The two of them, wreathed in the ethereal light of the same neon signs, three years and some spare change following the end of their carefree days? Fuck.

Saburo started to leg it over, suddenly worried his small-time heroes would vanish, as they were infamously fond of doing, and his shot at journalistic greatness would be snuffed just like that. In a flashy tornado of leaves, or something. 

He skipped over a sunken cobble stone and dodged a splash from a woman cleaning her ten-gallon wok in the street, and was just shimmying around a rolling rack of last season’s freshest fits when Saburo noticed something else, faltered with one foot sunk in a puddle of cigarettes, and waited for his heart to fall back into step.

Hatake was _maskless_. If the rumors were to be ardently disbelieved, no one had ever seen Kakashi without his mask. And almost certainly no one had documented it, Saburo thought, in the holy process of film. 

“Guys -- “ he stuttered, out of breath from his short but exhilarating walk. He climbed up onto the raised walk but didn’t join them under the overhang. “Can I get a shot real quick? It’s for the _Hidden Leaf Press_.”

Kakashi ignored him. Saburo measured out his breaths and clutched at his camera for moral support. Then the dark-haired shinobi clattered into laughter; smile wide and teeth bared but the sound was cheerless, and behind his orange lenses one eye looked a touch too dark.

“Um, hey, idiot -- ” 

Saburo glanced around, because this was not an unusual form of address. Hatake angled a disinterested glare at him. “I’m _rolling_.”

The icy apathy squeezed Saburo’s inklings of dismay into a wriggling knot of doom and he swallowed thickly. A mole stood out on the older shinobi’s right cheek, another just south of the left corner of his mouth -- and held delicately between his hands was a rice paper canoe white as his fingers, with the seal still loose. Usually the Copy Nin’s hitai-ate covered his Sharingan eye but today both town legends were clearly off-duty. Saburo strained his eyes and thought he caught a glimmer of red in the shadow of his hair, but it could have easily been the warm glow of the _Open_ sign in the glass behind them.

“So, uh,” Saburo swallowed again, and decided to risk everything. “After that, then?”

“After that, we’re gonna _smoke_ it.” Obito answered bluntly.

“I was just, uh, hoping to get a shot of you guys -- with your, uh, your mask down, Hatake-senpai.”

“ _Hatake-senpai_ ,” the Uchiha keened. 

Kakashi’s eyes slid up again and held Saburo in a grip of terror. The shadows lifted and he tried not to dance too much between the scarred eye and the gray one. “I’ve seen you around the Academy, I think. What’s your name?”

Saburo answered. 

“Hm,” Hatake hummed. “What kind of shinobi are you, Saburo?”

“Um -- “ He panicked. “A, uh, a decent one?”

Obito snickered and snapped a clarifying demand. “No, are you a _genin_ , a chunin or what?” 

“Oh, I haven’t graduated.” Saburo lifted his camera to his chest. “I’m with the paper.”

“Yeah. We _ga_ thered that much.” 

Kakashi huffed a small laugh, glanced sideways at his old teammate with the flicker of an approving half smile. Obito took this as his cue to continue. 

“Don’t like all you paper people,” he said. “I don’t like all your stupid questions.”

“I won’t ask any stupid questions,” Saburo promised. 

The Uchiha peered at him for a moment, tilting his head. “You’re not gonna be very good at this newspaper thing, Sakiko.”

“Saburo,” he corrected him. “I know, man. I really just want the picture.”

“ _Riight_ ,” he leaned away, nodding understandingly, but then his voice went cruel at the edges. “A picture of Bakashi’s stupid face, for all his admirers.”

“Um -- “

“You know what you should also get a picture of?” He said, leaning back in. “My scars.”

“Obito.” said Kakashi, toneless.

“What? That’s what they want, isn’t it? Come on, kid -- I’ll let you get real close. You can fit his cute moles and my gross scars in the same frame.”

Saburo’s hands were shaking. 

“Stop. Obito, you’re terrorizing him.”

“Shut up,” he snapped back, but thankfully turned his veiled gaze away from Saburo to address his former rival. “ _I’m_ the one who’s been terrorized, since the day I woke _up_ these motherfuckers have been riding me to the market, jumping out the damn bushes. I can’t even go look at Rin’s name for a hot _min_ ute before five of them are climbing onto my -- “

“No,” Saburo interrupted, shaking his head at the wet pavement. He felt three eyes on him, and looked up. “I’m sorry, you’re right. News should never be done like that. It’s not supposed to be about spreading stories, chasing only what people want to hear; it should be a lens. A good newspaper is just a lens, you know? I don’t want to spread a story about your scars -- but with your consent, I’d like to spread awareness. Starting with this picture.”

Saburo elevated his camera again, feeling sheepish.

After a moment of silence, Kakashi broke it with an intake of breath. He shook his head and his mouth split sideways in a smile that was sharkish at the corners. “Sorry kid, you’re not getting this picture, not today. Nice try though.”

“You can get a picture of my gloves -- “ Obito leapt in. “Get a picture of my cool gloves!”

A fist was flying for his face and Saburo lurched backward so quickly he donked up something delicate in his back and almost went down like a flower to the cold earth. Instead he stumbled back a step and stapled his teeth to his lower lip, blinking a tear from his eye. 

“He’s ob _sessed_ with his new gloves,” Kakashi drawled, starting to gingerly twist the paper in his hands.

Obito threw a flurry of punches in the air, bouncing on his toes. “Check it out. Pretty fresh, huh?”

Saburo struggled to determine the make and design of the gloves as the shinobi’s fists flew. The pons on the knuckles glowed faintly orange. 

“Are they chakra-blocking?” He ventured to ask. “Where’d ya get ‘em?”

A brick of displaced air flushed his hair from his forehead as Obito continued to shadow-box in front of him. He didn’t answer any of his polite questions and Saburo started to feel awkward. He glanced at Kakashi for help. 

“He doesn’t know where I got them,” the Copy Nin sighed. “They’re not actually that easy to find. I, uh -- “

Here Hatake seemed to regather himself; he disguised the pause by lifting the twisted paper to his lips and running his tongue along the seal. “I thought his taijutsu needed work.”

Everything he did looked so slow and effortless, Saburo couldn’t be sure whether he’d hesitated at all.

“The chakra blockers make them _heavy_ ,” said Obito. “I’m gonna take ‘em off in a month, and my hands are gonna shoot _flames_ I’ll be so strong. And then they’ll have to make me Hokage. Pretty fresh, huh?”

“Uh huh,” Saburo stuttered again and hated himself for it, putting up his hands in flimsy defense as Obito shoved his fists through the air inches from his face. “They’re pretty cool.”

Another sigh came from the jōnin against the wall. “Tell him they’re fresh.”

“Er -- “ Saburo glanced back to the blur of the Uchiha’s fists. “They’re fresh.”

“I know,” Obito confirmed, finally dropping his hands and falling back to the wall. He leaned an elbow on the other shinobi’s shoulder and pointed to him with his free hand. “You wanna be a decent ninja, kiddo -- this is the guy to watch. Kakashi Hatake. When duty calls, he’s there with _bells_ on, and a lightning blade, dude. Duty calls and Kakashi’s there in one of those kinky leather outfits. Duty has to take a piss, and he’s there with his mouth open -- “

“Shut up!” Kakashi elbowed at the Uchiha, humor betrayed in the slant of his mouth. Then Kakashi turned to Saburo and looked him dead in the eye. “Look, Seguro -- if you want to graduate the Academy and join rank, remember this; there’s gonna come a day when you have to decide for yourself whether to believe what you _know_ , or what you’ve been told. Make sure you can live with what you choose, because once you act on it there’s no going back. There’s no getting back the things you sacrifice, sometimes.”

Saburo bowed his head and nodded along to the advice even as the final _sometimes_ hung in the air and lingered, sort of solemn and significant, until the sound of Obito’s belligerent snort of laughter thrust it aside. 

“This guy saved me from a giant _rock_ \-- “ He boasted, seizing the Copy Nin around the neck. “He’s basically in love with me.”

Saburo felt the corners of his mouth twitch. He glanced up without lifting his head, but Hatake made no effort to refute the claim. He watched under his lashes as Obito sort of stuck his neck out and bumped his nose against Kakashi’s cheek, and in return for the affectionate gesture he was elbowed away.

“Cut it out -- Obito, your goggles.”

Saburo chewed his lower lip. “Uchiha-senpai -- how come you wear those goggles all the time?”

Kakashi responded at a cadence so lazy it seemed a toss-up whether he’d finish his thought or not. “If Obito takes off his goggles -- you will fall into his black eyes, and die instantly.”

Obito’s laughter cantered into the evening again. Far from the cheerless bark from before, this time it sounded like full-bodied joy. 

“I’m just kidding,” Kakashi continued, apathetic. “He’s actually really sensitive about his hairline.”

“Hey! What!” Obito yelped. “Don’t tell him that!”

Saburo’s fingers itched to take the picture, his ears ached for the shutter-click -- he settled for another tentative question. 

“Is there a drug policy in ANBU?”

Kakashi snorted. “Where d’you think I picked up the habit?”

His dry response reached Saburo’s ears about the same time as Obito bounced off the wall and ranged forward to prod him in the sternum, just once, but in a way that would surely bruise. 

“You said _no_ questions.”

Technically, Saburo had said no _stupid_ questions.

“I’m not ANBU anymore, anyway.” said Kakashi, as if the confrontation weren’t happening. He shrugged a lighter from his pocket and bussed the flame along the long edge of the paper tube, presumably to seal the adhesive, then tucked the twisted little dub into the corner of his mouth. 

“You’re not?” Saburo tried to glance around, but his view of the Copy Nin was even further obstructed when Obito lifted his arms and clasped his hands behind his neck. Unsure how to decipher his body language, Saburo carefully lifted his gaze and made slow glancing eye contact with the Uchiha -- left with the distinct impression he was going to be beat up and stuffed in a greasy storm drain. 

“They wouldn’t let me on missions, at first,” Obito said lowly. “I trained, and I trained. I passed their _bull _shit exam for my colors -- ”__

__A bunch of smoke cascaded over his back and cut Obito’s silhouette into soft pink hues, and Saburo watched the one-eyed shinobi perform a half-turn and accept something from Kakashi._ _

__“I trained,” he said again, and seemed to look straight through Saburo while he dragged on the rice paper joint. Smoke left his voice light and dry. “But it’s like they think I don’t work well in teams anymore, or something. Now I’ve got an ANBU _handler_ and all these bullshit _rules_ to follow.”_ _

__“Teammate,” Kakashi corrected, voice neutral. “And special conditions.”_ _

__“I can’t even do a _C_ -rank on my own.” Obito continued, loud. “You know what that’s like? Wait, of course you don’t. Imagine your least favorite aunt needs help, like, hanging laundry for six hours -- ”_ _

__“That’s not an accurate representation of a C-rank,” Kakashi scolded gently._ _

__“Fine,” his teammate heaved an exaggerated sigh and shrugged his shoulders. “She needs help hanging the laundry, and -- some hoe is trying to kill her.”_ _

__“She needs help with the laundry, and a small border clan needs her blood for a sacred ritual.” Kakashi suggested._ _

__“Nah, wait -- “ Obito chuckled, puffing smoke as he handed off the joint. “It’s laundry day, and she’s got a bad feeling about the raven across the street.”_ _

__Both of them stomped their feet and cawed with laughter. Saburo glanced around for the punchline but figured it slipped him by._ _

__“Yo-o,” Kakashi intoned, wiping delicately at his scarred eye with his little finger. “It’s only funny ‘cause it’s_ ha _ppened.”_ _

__“Senjutsu in a bird was so unex_ pected. _I know they’re supposed to be smart but that was next level -- ”_ _

__“No, next level was wiping out an entire city_ block _to get rid of it -- “_ _

__“_ Fast _,” Obito interrupted him with a hiss, turning to gesture at Saburo like he needed to be understood. “I mean, birds are really fucking_ fast _.”_ _

__Kakashi started to speak, coughed, and shook his head at the ground instead._ _

__“And you gotta think,” Obito went on. “If this thing was capable of absorbing chakra from its surroundings, then it probably had sensor abilities too, right?”_ _

__Saburo, baffled and somewhat rusty on his senjutsu lore, nodded his head._ _

__“What?” Kakashi protested, strangely incensed. “No, man, the bird was not in_ sage mode _, it just absorbed a bunch of chakra from an old pier -- trust me, it doesn’t take a lot of finesse to get the drop on_ you _in a game of tag. Catching a wild thing takes restraint, and a gentle touch.”_ _

__“I’m -- “ Obito struggled for the word. “Gentle!”_ _

__“Like_ Mo _kuton you are.”_ _

__Saburo had never heard the Copy Nin so sassy._ _

__“Listen, do you mind if I get a picture of you two?”_ _

__Kakashi shrugged, languid, and blew a long flume of exhaust to the side. “If you want a lightning bolt up your ass.”_ _

__“I don’t get what the big deal is, anyway,” Obito grumbled, falling back against the wall. “It’s a mask, there’s a _face_ underneath it. I got squished under a rock and then everybody I loved died -- and sometimes I feel crazy from it, but, I mean, whatever -- shit happens. We’re shinobi.”_ _

__Saburo bowed his head again and an underhung quiet fell. Around them the night market was sparking up as the sun fell down. The dusky bud smell was whipped away and replaced by food aromas almost as soon as it left their mouths and nostrils. With his eyes on the ground Saburo noted the distance between the boys, tracked the pendulum swing of Kakashi’s shoe as he scuffed lazily at the stones. It crept on and on till he was toeing at his teammate’s heel, and when Saburo looked up again their hands seemed to separate, and then Obito was lifting the last burning inch of rice paper to his lips._ _

__“Is it true you’ve awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan?”_ _

__The Uchiha looked about to respond when Kakashi cut him off with surprising speed. “_ That _is a stupid question. Try something else.”_ _

__Saburo thought it was the only intelligent question he’d asked all evening, actually._ _

__“So -- your strategy is to cage me into stupid questions, just so you can give stupid answers,” he realized._ _

__“How d’you like it?” Obito challenged._ _

__“It sucks,” he admitted. “But... what kinds of stupid questions have you guys been asked before?”_ _

__“Oh, this and that,” said Kakashi vaguely._ _

__“‘_ Obito-kun, _’” his partner parroted. “Can you see me from over there? How far do your scars go? Have you seen Kakashi-kun? What’s it like being on a team again? What’s it like losing_ three years _of your life? How d’you even get_ up _in the morning -- ‘”_ _

__

__

__“Maa, Obito,” Hatake interrupted his tirade, quiet and careless. “How did you get those bite-marks on your ankles?”_ _

__The scarred shinobi colored instantly, pink around both ears and spreading under his goggles. Not from the neon signs, either._ _

__“Closet pervert!” He hissed._ _

__“Dead_ last _,” Kakashi teased back, dodging easily when Obito lunged for him, then again, and once more. Finally the Copy Nin pulled up his mask, offered Saburo a two-fingered salute with a kindly curve in his eyes -- then he turned tail and ran._ _

__“Bakashi!” his teammate growled, stumbling after him with smoke on his heels._ _


	2. mission days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo! here it is here we go
> 
> sit back
> 
> recline
> 
> inhale

[mission days](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/mission-days?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

The second time Saburo ran into Kakashi and Obito, it was aboard public transit, of all places. No self-respecting ninja really _needed_ Konoha’s public transport, but it was so aggressively convenient that it became an imperative, for villagers and shinobi alike -- especially after a ten or twelve-hour day of demeaning labor, when the walk back to the projects meant shady alleyways filled with stumbling drunks, piss water on your ankles, and running out of steam before the top of the stairs.

The green line stopped at the Academy, the city library, and the west gate, which wasn’t far from the student housing projects. It would’ve been easy to miss two lounging boys in plain clothes at any other time of day on the green line, but at 2300 and the last hour of the work week there was no overlooking Kakashi’s wild hair or Obito’s trademark orange in the raised back platform of the deserted city bus. 

Saburo was just coming off a hard deadline for the Sunday issue and not fit enough to drag his feet all the way back home. He’d met his word limit with barely a minute to spare -- wasn’t even sure what he’d written, in the final hour -- and he was certain he’d be called to headquarters tomorrow morning to fix his typos with his editor breathing fire down his collar. It wasn’t like any of their readers would be too distraught over a formatting bug in the _gardening_ column, but neither was Haruhi-san likely to let him slink by with substandard work, especially considering Saburo was reassigned to the gardening column last month only after it was deemed the least disruptive place for him. 

He just thought that Konoha’s sanitation network -- more specifically the drainage system that led water from the upper village down to Green Lake and the housing projects -- warranted more scrutiny than which bushes were blooming inside the park. 

“Hey,” Saburo said, aiming for casual cool and falling around shitting his pants nervous. “Mind if I get a shot for the paper?” 

Kakashi shifted his back minutely against the window where he sat with one leg stretched along the bench, and after a moment his eyes slid up to Saburo over his book. His Sharingan was activated and angry-looking despite his relaxed expression. His eyes flicked to the side, and back down. 

Saburo followed his glance. “Oh. He’s sleeping.”

His teammate had nodded off leaning against the glass, goggles askance over his forehead. Saburo noticed an angry scrape over his cheek, mottled over the old scarring. There was a large travelling pack on the floor between the benches, and a thick, red, claylike dirt covering the floor. 

“This is the last time,” Hatake said slowly. “You will ever see him asleep.”

Saburo nodded even though it probably wasn’t necessary.

“Just back from a mission?” He asked, carefully quiet, and settled down on the edge of the long bench across the aisle. He glanced around again and confirmed only three or four other commuters on the bus, all civilian and determined to ignore each other.

The brakes wheezed and the thin traffic sneezed and whined around them but Saburo imagined he heard a response.

“A long one? You guys look beat.” 

Just the fact that Obito was _sleep_ ing in a public place made it a one in a million occurrence -- few shinobi would or even _could_ allow themselves to be caught in such a state. But from the flush on their skin, the rapid rise and fall of Uchiha’s chest, and the sheer volume of dirt on the floor, it was clear the older nin were fresh from beyond the wall, and from the looks of it, a fairly long trek. Obito didn’t just look beat, he sounded _winded_. It was exhaustion that kept his eye closed. 

“Don’t wake him,” Kakashi warned in the same quiet hum, idly turning a page.

Saburo wouldn’t make it off the bus alive if he did, he guessed. 

“You think... he’s ready to be on away missions again? I mean, it hasn’t been so long since -- “

“Who cares?” He flicked another page, and his expression reminded Saburo of his mother, suddenly -- closed off and almost petulant. “It’s what he wants.”

“Right,” Saburo agreed, perhaps a little too heartily. “Who’s to say rest and recovery go hand in hand, anyway.”

Kakashi slowly lowered his book. “Seguro, right? I remember you.”

Saburo opened his mouth and his voice fled back down the tubes to his toes. 

“I saw one of your pieces in the _Hidden Leaf_ last month,” the jōnin continued, as if it were a bit of blackmail. “That backpager about insomnia.”

“Oh?” Gods, but he was starting to sweat. “Oh, yeah. Editor chewed me out for that one -- too many uneven lines.”

“I liked the way you conceived the mind as a vessel, and memory, the water.”

“Th-thank you -- ”

“I always imagined memory would be blue,” he went on. “You know, if it had a color.”

“Uh... huh,” Saburo agreed hesitantly. As usual, a conversation with the Copy Nin felt a little like losing his balance. 

“I like that photo you picked, too, with the tide coming to shore, and that long jetty. But let me ask you something -- is it through experience the mind makes contact with reality, or consciousness? Could you ever accurately map objective reality from the shoreline, or would it be necessary to leave your vessel?”

“I, uh -- try not to get too caught up in the, uh, the metaphors,” Saburo swallowed with difficulty, feeling something a bit like motion sickness as his mind grappled with the questions. “I could work on it, I guess.”

“You should.”

Saburo closed his mouth. Perhaps this was the Copy Nin’s roundabout way of telling him to shut up and stay in the gardening corner. The bus eased to a stop at the library. A few of the passengers slipped out. The library wasn’t open at this time of night but it was the center of town and close to a popular residential area. 

“I've got a story for you," Kakashi said abruptly. "Your next backpager. Two years ago, I was doing solo runs while some members of my squad were on medical leave. Then one day Mission Control saddled me with five greenhorns and a mission from Hell: some horse shit they were calling an ‘ecology assessment’.”

“Greenhorns -- ?”

Kakashi rubbed one hand over his face. “You know, shinobi fresh from their entrance exams -- greenhorns, new animals, new recruits. Base commander wanted me to take them on a few runs, get their blades wet with some standard order S-ranks to help transition into ANBU. But an ecology assessment? _Psh_ \-- shit, man, I knew this one was bad news from the get-go.”

“How come?”

One grayish eyebrow quirked upward and the jōnin laid his book down like he was about to deliver a sermon on eternal salvation, or, like, a litter of golden puppies. Then, slowly: “S-rank missions _on_ ly show up looking like friendly overseas science when something’s flying _way_ under the radar.”

“I see.” Saburo said, wondering if taking out his pen and notepad would be too obvious. “Do you mean overseas like, the Mist?” 

The Copy Nin’s gaze was not mean but it was very intense. Saburo was suddenly grateful the older shinobi regularly covered his frightening red eye and ‘cute moles.’ It was all so much at once. 

“Somewhere very far away, kid.”

Any mission involving ANBU was a patchwork of secrecy and misdirection. Saburo understood that from his mother’s ANBU days. He fell silent. 

“It was a security gig,” Hatake explained. “They wanted us to ship out with half a dozen ninken and make border rounds for a base set up in enemy territory. I guess Mission Control picked me because we all trained dogs.”

“Enemy territory,” Saburo repeated. “An enemy -- of the Leaf?”

“You could say that. At the time, maybe,” was his cryptic answer. “An enemy of the Hokage’s interests. I don’t think of it like that, though. Our contractors needed a third shift to walk the perimeter at night, and they were willing to pay. The fact that we were interfering in a foreign conflict was… leftover milk. That was the name of the country we were surveying, by the way.” 

Saburo felt his eyebrows knit together, and thought he’d missed something. Obito was right. He really was a terrible journalist -- 

“Leftover Milk,” said Kakashi, some wile in his half-lidded eyes. “A pseudonym, of course.”

“Oh.” Leftover… _milk?_ The more Saburo learned about ANBU covert operations, the more he wondered. 

“The base, guard bunkers, and towers were manned by guards. Nervous, all of them. Heavily armed and nervous -- they were just about your age, I guess. 13 or 14.

“After dark the posting trucks brought us out to post, one nin and one ninken to a specific stretch of territory. Nothing but bare minimum supplies -- rain sheet, C-rations, some slap flares. When fighting broke out between the wall guard and the guerilla home forces, we were caught in the middle, with the booby traps, the punji sticks, bamboo vipers, and a whole host of insects that didn’t want us there.”

Kakashi paused. “I really thought I knew darkness, before then. I remember the trucks driving off that first night and taking all the light in the world with them. No moon, no stars, no horizon. Sharingan is worthless without at least something to reflect. I couldn’t see my dog five feet in front of me -- it all bled together. _’What am I doing here?’ ‘Am I crazy?’ ‘Will I make it to morning?’ ‘Am I going to die here?’_ Thoughts run through your mind, you know -- you think of things. There’s a lot of time out there to think. Between walking my post I would sit and listen. We all think we know darkness but we don’t. Most don’t. I thought it was a lack of light but in this country it was a living thing. I felt it occupy the space around me, pressing in, touching me. The darkness _allowed_ me to pass through it.”

Saburo shifted his eyes out the window behind his head and saw a black sheet. He’d always thought the suburbs of Konoha were so much darker. After a second, though, he could pick out the horizon line, and then distant lights, some silhouettes. A streetlamp flashed by and then a whirl of cheery advertisements as they turned a corner towards the city center. 

Kakashi went on like it was a traffic report. “I talked to myself. It was so easy to panic, out there. The endless dark, the enemy attacks, the jaguars, cobras, bats so big they sounded like men in the trees till you heard them chirping -- so many ways to get killed, I guess. It started to take a toll on my squad. I could tell they were scared. They weren’t sure they were gonna make it another night. Sometimes neither was I. And then I started losing people.”

“The thing was,” he continued at leisure, cleaning the inside of his left nostril and flicking away the loot. “One ordinary assassin can’t _disappear_ a member of ANBU, green or not. That just doesn’t happen, you know? But we couldn’t figure out how they were coordinating the attacks. There were no radio transmissions, never any flares -- we tried changing the intervals for our walks, even the routes we took around our posts, but nothing worked. We were being picked out of the darkness, one by one, and our sensors couldn’t even pick up any chakra signatures until it was too late.”

The bus jerked to a stop. The doors opened and no one left. Saburo got the impression Obito had been shaken from his slumber, but his eye stayed shut. 

“They say the gods protect children and fools.” said the Copy Nin. “I was a captain; I had a name and it meant everything to me -- so I was probably a fool, yeah. And I was 15, so, maybe a bit of both. But one night on post, I was sitting, and listening, and I was talking to myself, yeah -- and then I realized... the night was talking back.”

Before Saburo could fully form his question Kakashi carried on. “Every night there was this sound in the air, like a haunted old door creaking open -- only, it would go on forever, dude, until you almost forgot it was there. 15 minutes of _cree-e-eak_ up and down and all out of tune. I thought it was bugs but it was the call of the night-jar -- a kind of hawk in the area that uses sound to locate and track prey in the darkness. When one night-jar runs into another it mimics the cry, hoping to compete for the same prey. The guerilla forces had trained these birds with specific patterns to carry signals around the base. Each message was just two tones repeated over and over: the first note identified one of the base’s towers, and the second note was the direction the attack would come from. After each attack the code changed, and the night-jars started a new call -- counting their kills. Four down. Seven down. Two.”

“What did you do?” Saburo asked, hardly breathing. 

Kakashi took his time picking up his book, folding a dog ear into his page and closing it properly. “Maa. I didn’t figure out the code until two weeks after getting back.”

“But then -- “ Saburo tried to organize his thoughts. If he couldn’t break it in time, what was the point of deciphering the code at all? More importantly… “How did you make it out?” 

“The last night I was there, I got called off post to help out the wall guard. On the way there I ran into my dog. I told him to keep going, and he wouldn’t. I asked what was there -- he wouldn’t say. I kicked him in the ass, but he was froze. I didn’t want to draw attention to my position, but I lit up my Chidori for a second, just to take a look. There was a rift in the ground and a 25-foot drop in front of us where there had been nothing before. In the dirt I counted at least four dead things and one not moving. She was alive, so, I could sense her. I went down to her. _One down_ \-- the call was in the trees but I couldn’t make any sense of it, then. I lit a flare and stopped the bleeding, but, something was wrong inside and by the time the sun came up, she bled so much into her abdomen she looked pregnant. In the light I found all my team and their dogs buried in that dirt. It was just me and Akino left. After that our contractors forfeited the position and our mission was over.”

“So…” Saburo waited for more and none came. “What happened to Leftover Milk?”

Kakashi shrugged. “I dunno. That’s the end of the story.”

“That’s it? But -- what about… what was with all the dirt? How were they doing it?”

“Tunnels.” Obito’s long eyelashes wobbled and he snorted gently. “Down.”

“What do you want, a moral?” Kakashi pretended to think, then appeared to strike gold. He dropped his fist into his open palm. “Ecological assessments are horse shit.”

Obito snorted again.

“I don’t know,” the Copy Nin continued, and stopped again to yawn. “Sometimes I haven’t thought about that mission in months. Then I hear a sound like a creaking door and feel that darkness all over me again. Maybe -- I’m still buried out there?”

“Better out there in the tropics than anywhere near the Frost or that stinking forest,” his teammate murmured, hunkering down further against the window. “B-ranks, I swear. Doesn’t mean a good fight, just a chance to freeze your nuts off and shit in a hole. I wanna be buried in blankets.”

His muttering faded until Obito rasped a snore and seemed to drop off again. 

Kakashi smiled at him, then turned the unsettling expression on Saburo. “Sorry about my friend, he’s -- totally belligerent.”

If the Uchiha was faking, Saburo had seriously underestimated the somewhat hot-headed ninja's restraint. 

For a moment he watched Hatake watching his teammate and felt mildly uplifted after the grim story. 

“The thing is,” Kakashi mused. “As a shinobi, you’re up against that darkness wherever you go. You face it again, and again, and every single time it’s gonna bring you to the edge, until you’re asking those questions, damn near losing it out there -- but we keep going back, anyway, because every once in a while someone makes it out of that darkness with you. And afterwards, when you trip off that memory, hating everything about it and how it went down, you can look at that person and remember and say... _what the fuck?_ And that’s all you really need.”

“Err -- “ Saburo blinked.

“I wanted to kill him,” He continued, no longer looking at him. “Seriously, back of my mind I was so pissed, listening to him, lying there, _daring_ to tell me he wasn’t gonna make it -- ”

Saburo realized he was talking about the incident at Kannabi Bridge.

“Fucking -- idiot. Barely past 12; you’re not allowed to die like that, not by a rock. Not for me. We weren’t even -- I wasn’t -- ”

It was unmistakable this time: Kakashi paused. He paused to take a long, silent breath, and returned to neutral. “It felt wrong, leaving him there, with the shit crumbling down around us. Maybe it was the rational thing to do but something just felt wrong about it. I knew using Chidori was either going to save us or kill us both, but I decided I wasn’t going to get fuck-all out of being a good shinobi unless we both made it. I couldn’t let people see that I had a blind spot as big as that fucking rock, when it came to him.”

“Uhh,” Saburo started to search for the right words to agree. He had never heard such competitive reasoning for saving somebody’s life.

“Out there talking to that darkness, I never panicked. I kept thinking -- Obito’s still in a coma back home, and nobody thinks he’s coming out of it, nobody thinks he’ll heal. How could I expect him to fight and win against _those_ odds if I couldn’t even hold my own against Leftover _Milk?_ Do you get what I’m saying? Maybe the Sharingan didn’t work at the time, but he was still there, protecting my blind spot, see? And there’s something pretty unique and powerful about that. _Suffering_ , man, that’s what I’m talking about -- are you picking this up?”

“Yes, I’m picking -- I mean I think I’ve got it.”

Hatake sat back, loose-limbed and ferocious like something too proud to hunt small prey.

“You think he’s ready?” Saburo asked again. “To be back out there.”

Kakashi shrugged. “Were those greenhorns ready for Leftover Milk? I don’t know, kid. I don’t know if anyone’s really ready. Few days on the road probably did him good, though. We really didn’t get a decent fight -- just two miserable trips through the Shivering Forest. A test of mental resilience, if anything.”

“You guys went through the _Shivering Forest_ and back in a _few days?_ That’s -- “ It was impossible, except at a suicidal pace. “That’s in _sane_.”

He couldn’t help but glance back at his sleeping teammate. No wonder he was breathing like he’d been swimming uphill for three days.

Kakashi tracked eye movements like a killing machine. “I’m not going to slow down for him.”

Well, _clearly_ , Saburo thought, but said nothing. Hatake’s off-putting, mellow demeanor seemed at odds with his cold-blooded reputation and rip you apart eyes, but Saburo imagined he was beginning to see the shinobi behind the many masks he wore. 

“Besides,” the Copy Nin began, twisting around to set his feet on the floor and tuck his book into one of the side pockets in their bag. It was a first-in pack, one of the loaners from Mission Control; they came stocked with basic survival gear, first aid kit, rations, and weaponry. One first-in bag per ninja was always safest, but depleted energy more quickly, so elite teams often split the load of one.

“He looks good.”

Saburo zoomed back into the conversation. Kakashi heaved the bag onto the seat beside him and tugged at the wrists of his gloves, paying his audience no mind. 

“He actually looks pretty good.” He said again. 

“He finally took off those gloves,” Saburo observed. 

“Huh? Oh,” he rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Only after the fool almost collapsed on the way back. I wanted to throw them in the fucking quarry, honestly. It doesn’t make sense, wearing those into a fight -- something that keeps you from your peak strength. _Uchihas_ , you know? Self-important brat. He’d fake his own death and tear apart the world if he thought it might prove something.” 

Saburo eyed the Uchiha in question and if he was pretending to be asleep, he was doing a very good job of it. Kakashi got to his feet and popped the collar of his jacket. They were almost to the west gate. It was late for the students but early for the night-life of Konoha, and the lights inside and along the perimeter of Green Lake Park flashed brightly over the windows. 

In one fluid movement Kakashi stooped and proceeded to wake his teammate. Saburo had had an idea about them since their last informal interview, but it still caught him off guard when the jōnin leaned over Obito’s left shoulder and, with his visible eye locked on Saburo eyeing them openly across the aisle, closed his lips over the far side of his partner’s mouth. 

It was probably a very gentle thing to wake up to, and Obito didn’t seem to mind at all. Saburo swiftly dropped his gaze and began an in-depth study of the floor between his feet, but he heard the small sounds of Obito’s response, followed by a faint murmuring.

“Kakashi… ”

Saburo felt a tear almost rise to his eye; he’d never heard _k_ sounds so soft. 

“Your Sharingan is on...” Obito accused, low and hoarse from his slumber.

“Someone’s gotta watch our backs.”

“ _Ch_ ,” the Uchiha tsked. “Paranoid...”

“That newspaper kid is here,” Kakashi informed him. “He’s been asking questions.”

“Who?” Obito looked up, rubbing a knuckle into his eye. The other was covered by a blood red patch. “Oh, hey, Sakiko.”

Saburo corrected him hastily.

“Oh,” Obito mumbled, turning back to his teammate. “Dude look like a lady.”

Hatake barked a laugh and caught himself quickly. He fell back into his seat and glanced across the aisle. “Sorry about my friend -- he’s ignorant garbage.”

Obito groaned, clasped his hands behind his neck and flung himself to his feet like he was on strings. There the Uchiha wobbled, then began a series of jerky stretches. Just out of curiosity Saburo watched for a glimpse of his terrible black eye, but the shinobi was still heavy-lidded from sleep and, from the sound of it, pure chakra exhaustion. 

After witnessing Kakashi’s freaky never-slow-down attitude, he could understand why the poor guy was dozing off on public transit. 

Either Obito had not bothered to shop at all since his recovery and was wearing clothes from three years previous or he simply disregarded sizing in general -- Saburo was betting on the former but couldn’t yet be sure -- the consequence was a casual show of skin which called to mind Kakashi’s appraising _he looks pretty good_ and gave it whole new meaning. Beyond the fact that the dude literally came back from the dead and is throwing B-ranks like they’re boring social events, Obito didn’t fit the description of malnourished at all. The scarring indeed extended down his right side, but underneath, it was clear the Uchiha had been working hard. 

Or, Saburo thought, there was something more to this recovery story than met the eye.

Saburo felt eyes on him and shifted his gaze to meet Kakashi’s. The Sharingan pupil was still spinning, lazy like a momentum toy. He must be tired, too -- but that wheel had been turning in the shadows throughout the entirety of their conversation. It sent a shiver up Saburo’s spine, the level of hyper-alertness that could seem like nonchalance even while the jōnin told his story. 

The Copy Nin slid across his seat until Obito was standing between his knees and pulled his teammate forward by the hips.

“Tired?” he said, tipping his head back. Saburo recalled the rumors about Hatake’s jawline cutting glass, and found this to be a suitably deadly description. 

Obito nodded, rubbing his knuckle into his eye again. 

“Hungry?” Kakashi pressed.

“Sort of.”

“We’ll go up Wood Row. Get something to eat, take it back to the crib. Sound good?”

“I don’t feel like walking that much. Got jelly legs.”

“Too bad. It’s your fault for going too hard in the forest -- jelly legs means you have to eat. You have to recover.”

“How about,” Obito reached up and slid his goggles down over his eyes before continuing with his thought. “I go back to the crib, and you bring food.”

Kakashi frowned. “No, Obito, that’s not going to work.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Because you’ll be asleep when I get back and you know it.”

“Nah, I gotta unpack all my shit, and wash off all this dirt -- think about it, man, I’ll be all warm and snuggly when you get back -- "

“You’re gonna walk in the door, lay face-down on the couch, and that’s going to be that.”

Saburo stifled a giggle. 

Kakashi leaned over one elbow and wrapped his hand around the back of his teammate’s knee. “Come with me and we’ll stop at the Ainu grill. And that lady who sells your sugarfeet.”

“Auntie sugarfeet,” Obito sighed. He pushed one hand under his shirt and rested it over his stomach. “That would taste so good right now.”

“Sugarfeet?” Saburo inquired. 

“They’re these doughy things with brown sugar and bits of pork inside.” Kakashi supplied. “Kind of gross.”

“Delicious. I’m gonna eat twelve of them.” Obito swayed at the prospect. “I'm getting kinda hungry.”

“She won’t sell them to me if you’re not there.” Kakashi hummed.

“That’s because she sets them aside for _me_ ,” Obito leapt to the defense of his friend. “Auntie sugarfeet thinks I’m cute. I don’t think she can see that well in the dark.”

Hatake hummed again. “But I can.”

“Oy -- “ his teammate suddenly deadpanned. “Can you shut that thing off? It’s like my own eyeball looking back at me. It’s freaking me out.”

The Copy Nin rolled his eyes and they came back dark, just a tad darker on the scarred side. “It _is_ your own eyeball. In case you forgot.”

“How could I? It’s still better-looking than that bloody scrambled egg you had in there before.”

An unexpected flush arrived in the jōnin’s pale skin, like he’d hit a sensitive topic. “Obito…”

“What?” The Uchiha boasted, his exhaustion all but forgotten. “If it happened all over again I’d do the same thing.”

Just imagining the kind of resolve it took to gouge one’s own eye out sent another shiver up Saburo’s spine. Were all shinobi such self-sacrificial jerks?

As they approached the last stop on the green line, Kakashi stood and slid his arm under the strap of the first-in bag, slinging it over his back and leading the way down the aisle. Obito followed with his hands shoved in his pockets. Saburo gathered his things and caught up as the remaining passengers piled through the doors in front of them.

Obito broke into a skip to catch his teammate and adjust one of the zippered pouches on the side of the bag.

“Your porn was hanging out, K,” he said cheerily.

“It’s not porn, it’s _art_ \-- ”

“Okay-y, with that again.” To Saburo’s alarm, Obito reached out and clamped one hand down between his shoulder and neck, reeling him in. “That’s Kakashi, kiddo, hero of the Leaf -- a hundred different ways to make missionary more interesting. It’s probably a bunch of forbidden, sexy jutsus in there.”

A fine sheen of reddish clay dust broke from a crease in Obito’s jacket and showered Saburo’s camera. He bit his bottom lip and prayed for a painless release. The hand clamped over his shoulder had grown uncomfortably hot very fast. 

“To be honest I didn’t know what to expect, going around with a closet pervert.” The Uchiha continued, carelessly loud. “But it’s nice, actually. He’s always checking in, asking what I like, what feels good -- it’s almost annoying.”

Saburo was so anxious in the upperclassman’s embrace he could only catch every other word around the crinkle of the jacket around his ears and the unmistakable smell of armpit. 

“Sometimes, I wanna be like, dude -- just take it how you want it.”

The two of them abruptly bumped into the first-in pack and Saburo was able to slip out from under Obito’s arm and dodge behind him. 

Hatake turned slowly, just a few feet from the stairwell. The bus driver barked something at them but the boys paid him no mind. 

“Hey,” the Copy Nin took a step forward and questioned his partner in a very grave tone. “Are you serious?”

The Uchiha shoved his hands back in his pockets, shifted foot to foot but didn’t break eye contact. “Y-yeah.”

In the most astounding moment of Saburo’s journalistic career Kakashi turned back around with a lopsided grin breaking over his face and he _howl_ ed before taking the stairs in a single leap. Saburo could still hear him celebrating as Obito bounded for the doors and disappeared into the darkness after him.


	3. off days pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a part one, moving into a part twozers, which will finally transition us into k and obi perspective, at last~
> 
>  
> 
> just sit back  
> grab cat  
> and enjoy

[off days pt. 1](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/off-days-pt-1?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

With his fingertips brushing the final rung, Saburo looked down, and fought the urge to throw up. 

He knew the radio tower was sturdy but the wind over Konoha’s rooftops gave him the illusion of swaying. If he wasn’t looking through a column of criss-crossing bars directly into the hills far beyond the city's outer wall, it might not’ve been so bad. But as it was, Saburo would sooner face his mother’s cooking every day to the grave than the reality of his own dizzying height. 

It wasn’t lack of ability that made him a terrible ninja, it was just everything else.

Reaching the concrete block called Konohagakure Communications Center in the middle of town had been easy enough. Even the roof of the KCC hadn’t been all that bad, although it looked like one easy tumble into the Hokage’s Tower, from up there. A spare breeze could send him soaring like a leaf.

The Hokage’s Public Liaison described the Halcyon tower project to the citizens of the Leaf as a monument to peace and cooperation between shinobi villages. The facility’s newest upgrade, the tower rose 120 feet from the KCC and reportedly doubled the communication range of older models. At night it competed with the stars over the rooftops -- a starved black silhouette with dozens of flickering red eyes -- and on foggy days you all but lost the Halcyon radio tower except for a red glow in the clouds. It was one of Saburo’s favorite shots, that glow cloud, hovering over the communications center like a bad omen. It was a sight to drop on your knees for, and worship. 

Progress up the tower was agonizingly slow. 

It wasn’t raining but it was early enough that everything was covered in a layer of condensation. His palms were slick and numbed with cold, and every few inches Saburo groped for his camera. All this effort would be wasted if he reached the top platform in time for sunrise and nothing but his lousy eyes to prove he was there. It wasn’t that he needed recognition -- Saburo never published any of his own photographs -- but having them for himself was kind of nice. It was like having proof of his existence lying around in pieces, just in case anybody ever cared enough to put it all together and understand him. 

Was egotism in shinobi just a compulsion, Saburo wondered, or part of the design?

Regardless. His ego had led him to the top of the Halcyon radio tower, and promptly deserted him there on the last stretch of narrow, slippery iron rungs. Saburo knotted his arms around the nearest crossbeam and infinity-locked his legs around the next one below, the same way he’d clung to his father’s leg when he was a child. He would die here, he supposed. 

This high in the air he had only the tallest buildings for company. The looming Hokage Tower. Some of the apartments along Gentleman’s Alley, a few of the larger commercial buildings, and another radio tower or two in the distance. The sheer under-layer of clouds beneath him left the streets and shopfronts looking hazy blue. And small. So much smaller than they should -- 

“Gonna hang out there all day, or what?”

His limbs were frozen in place, but Saburo’s heart jumped. It hadn’t occurred to him that anybody would be on the platform. 

The stranger was mostly in shadow at the top of the ladder, but his goggles gave him away. That, and the hand he extended toward him glowed orange at the knuckles. 

It wasn’t any courage that unlocked Saburo’s legs and arms from their death clamps; he didn’t overcome his fear so much as grow a new one: looking stupid in front of Obito Uchiha. He reached for the glove. It wrapped around his arm and as he was groping for his camera it pulled him through the gap like a daisy. 

Heels planted on solid composite steel, Saburo felt his legs wobble and realized he’d been wrapped around that ladder, petrified, for almost an hour. 

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Saburo grimaced and nodded because Obito looked serious. His goggles were on his forehead, and his remaining eye sat undamaged among the twisted scars over the right side of his face as if to say _look, look what I have overcome_.

The highest platform of the Halcyon consisted of a perfect pentagon with a gap in the center for the last 20 feet of tower and the flock of blinking red lights he’d only ever seen through the clouds. The platform would probably be comfortable for a dozen people standing, but Saburo wouldn’t recommend it. A lip of steel and two iron railings were all that kept them from being whipped off the tower like bugs off a windshield. 

“Um -- “ Obito glanced over his shoulder, shifting and suddenly uncomfortable. “I have to do 50 more, so -- “

He gestured over his shoulder at the center of the platform. Saburo, utterly blank-sheeted by the breezy height, nodded quickly. 

“Y-yeah! Of course, do what you -- I’m just -- “ He elevated his camera. “I’m just here for -- “

“The shot.” Obito interrupted, not a smile but something like amusement on his face. “Yeah, I figured.”

The older shinobi abruptly turned and leapt away over the platform, and Saburo relaxed his shoulders, relieved. And he almost smiled, because Obito was not the same without Kakashi around, but, he wasn’t different, either. Saburo couldn’t explain it yet, but after the initial moment of terror and _why me of all people_ he was actually glad it was the Uchiha on top of the Halcyon radio tower. 

Climbing, the radio tower, Saburo corrected himself, squinting his eyes as Obito approached the center column, slipped inside the cage and prowled up a few bars. He grabbed onto one of the horizontal beams that formed the tower’s spine and swung there for a second, then crossed his ankles and started throwing a bunch of showy _pull_ -ups. Like some city vigilante too high-profile for the ordinary training grounds. 

Saburo glanced around and spotted some of Obito’s belongings lying near the center of the platform: a duffle bag, a pair of shoes, his usual jacket, a familiar-looking oil-spotted paper bag. He wondered if the communications center staff knew shinobi were taking their workouts to the most expensive city project since the _underground_. Although, to be fair, _every_ thing was terrain park for the village nin, and the tower kind of looked like a pointy jungle gym, he supposed. 

Saburo gave his curiosity a shake and crept to the eastern edge of the platform. He tested the railing both at the knee and the elbow, and found them secure. He kicked the ledge at his feet and it didn’t budge, but his toe hurt. 

In just minutes, the sun would rise majestically behind the Lord Fourth, and when it was precisely 12 degrees beneath the horizon, First Light would cover the whole city, bureau to borough; his rays would fill the bellies of the hungry and hopeless, acknowledge the unacknowledged -- his memory preserved in their strength. And all of this hardship would be worth it. 

“You look like you’re having a helluva moment.”

Saburo jerked backward as the railing trembled and something hit the platform with a _slap_ at his feet. He was momentarily assaulted by the smell of body odor and the hot taste of the air in his mouth. 

“Don’t let the light fool you,” Obito warned, leaning heavily over his elbows and narrowing his eye on the corona of sunlight just starting to ripple over the distant mountain. A paper bag crinkled in his hands. “This world’s busted up. Bad.”

He offered up a chestnut and Saburo took it without trembling overmuch. Obito returned his gaze to the skies and nodded in the direction of the Lord Fourth. “And he’s the one who left it to us.”

Saburo’s eyes stung at the sweat in the air. Obito’s biceps were like alien physiology. For every flick of the wrist it seemed like a whole symphony of tugging and twitching up the surface of his arm. He wished he would put his clothes back on but at a downward glance Saburo changed his mind; the jōnin's shirt resembled a liquid at their feet.

Obito abruptly reeled back one arm and catapulted it forward again in a graceful arch. Saburo heard the faint _whumf_ of displaced air and detected just the flicker of a dark object speeding from his hand. 

“Fucker!” hissed the scarred jōnin.

After a moment of pretending like he could track something moving that fast, Saburo relaxed. He even started to peel the shell from his nut when a distant _clang_ snapped his attention to the watertower standing on an apartment building at least three blocks from the KCC. He caught a glimpse of the black speck of Obito’s chestnut ricocheting off the barrel of the tower at 90 degrees, probably to fall somewhere across the street, forgotten.

“I’m just kidding,” said the Uchiha, throwing out his arm to wind up the shoulder again. “Minato was a loyal shinobi and he did what was best for his village to the very end. And as long as there are loyal shinobi throwing away their lives for the good of the village -- everything will be okay, right?”

Saburo shimmied a little further away along the railing, in case the idea took him and Obito launched him at the watertower instead.

“It’s -- hard to say.” He offered. 

“Nah, forget it,” Obito snapped, vicious but not in a way that made Saburo feel personally attacked. “I just don’t believe that, anymore.”

He dropped his shoulder, twisted his hips, and threw.

“Worst thing about coming back from the dead,” Obito narrowed his eyes on the laboring dawn as his projectile sailed for its target. “You can’t ever be ungrateful about anything.” 

This time the chestnut struck the slanted cover of the water barrel and arced high into the sky, where the wind must have caught it because the nut never fell back to earth.

“Nice,” Saburo complimented, leaning out to look up at the gloomy autumn clouds. 

“The best is, if you hit the belly just right, you can make the nut come flying back at you.” Obito wound up his arm again, then dropped it back to his side. “I’m not so good at that, though.”

Saburo didn’t think to express his disappointment because getting hit with a chestnut moving at the speed of sound didn’t seem like nearly as much fun as Obito made it out.

“I bet I could hit the Hokage Tower from here -- “

“No!” He panicked. “Don’t, please.”

Obito _harrumphed_ , glanced back at him with his dark eyebrows raised, and lowered his arm a second time. “Fine. Damn -- you shake like you’ve got priors.”

“No, I just, don’t wanna mess with those guys.”

The jōnin turned his back against the railing so that he could put his good eye on Saburo and examined him like he was hunting for bullshit. After a moment he reached up and adjusted his goggles over his forehead. “Yeah, can’t argue with that, kiddo.”

Obito’s expression lifted. “One time, me and Bakashi were up here, just messing around wasting time, waiting to make our report to the Tower and... His nut game is so good, man; like you wouldn’t believe. He can hit birds outta the sky. I swear.”

He paused, chuckling to himself, chestnut bouncing in his throwing hand, and Saburo tried to picture him and the Copy Nin on the Halcyon, goofing around in the crossbeams, playing the stupid nut game without shirts on. Even the image in his mind smelled bad. 

“He said he could hit the Tower from here,” Obito continued. “And this was before everything, so... I felt like he was hiding something from me; part of me didn’t trust him for shit. Anyway he winds one up, and I’m standing right where you are, thinking: yeah, yeah, whatever -- here comes stunt-Kakashi. And, I shit you not, this nut doesn’t just reach the Tower, it knocks _out_ the dude standing inside the window.”

“What? No -- ” Saburo reacted before he could help himself. “Who was it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Obito puffed out his chest, grinning. “We ran outta here like the Seven Swordsmen were behind us; didn’t even make a report that day. The _nut_ game on that one, I’m telling you!”

Saburo reflected on this story while Obito resumed his pitching practice. Why didn’t he trust Hatake -- what was his teammate hiding? _Which question is less invasive?_

“When did that happen?”

“Um. Not sure. It was after I woke up. But, before some other stuff.” A look of intense concentration overtook him, and the scarred jōnin knocked on the side of his head with one fist. “Man, my memory is shit!”

Saburo hurried to soothe him -- he hadn’t intended to call up the days immediately following his recovery; he didn’t want to jar the Uchiha from whatever normalcy he’d managed to establish for himself post-traumatic injury. Saburo had climbed all the way up here for sunlight, and instead he was stuck facing that terrible, black, eye. 

“It was after I woke up,” Obito said again. He arranged his hands on his hips and bent slightly to spit over the railing. “I was alone all the time. There were all these people in my room, every day, and voices in my ear -- kind ones, the ones you want to hear, all the ones I expected to hear except the two or three most obvious. Alone, with every single insignificant person in my life; they spoke, and I shrunk. I couldn’t take a piss without hearing all those meaningless, muted voices. But their words were all I had, so I listened, I caught up on three years. The truth seemed badly translated.”

For some reason these words made Saburo grip his camera tightly. He glanced at the horizon. Where was the First Light?

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

Obito blinked. Then: “What’re you sorry for?” He bellowed at him. “I don’t want anymore _sorry_ s -- I never wanted anyone to be sorry. I wanted them to be _better!_ ”

He folded his palms over the railing. For a moment the scarred jōnin looked determined to snap it. “You know where we are?” He asked. “Do you know what this is?”

“The, uh,” Saburo started, stuttered. “The Halcyon radio tower -- “

“Wrong.” said Obito. “It’s a big, giant, dick.”

“Err…”

“You’re not a genin yet and I can see you’re kind of different so you probably don’t know dispersion tactics when you see them,” he continued over Saburo’s confusion. “But let this tower give you a clue: this piece of shit was put up in five months; the power grid for a whole city _block_ needed to be upgraded for it to function. You know what’s underneath this building?”

Saburo shook his head. 

“Of _course_ you don’t,” he snapped. “What’s underneath this building is secret shit that normal citizens don’t know about.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t, dipshit. Wait till I’m done explaining it. Dispersion tactics can be offensive or defensive. During the Second Shinobi World War, allied forces dropped packages codenamed _Bull_ shit Bombs in civilian zones: literally exploding boxes of paper propaganda, to infiltrate the minds of the people. In the field, special teams went in after the fighting to plant envelopes from the enemy’s home country on the bodies. The letters inside hinted at broken families and cheating partners -- anything to demoralize the combatants. Now we have this great big dick in the middle of town, and we can disseminate the same bullshit bombs through the airwaves. You can dodge a nut, you can dodge a letter -- but it’s a lot harder to dodge sound.”

Obito took a step back, then bounded up to the railing and planted his foot on the center bar as he hurled his next chestnut. 

“The strength of a village is in the length of its shadow,” he said. 

The missile struck the belly of the water tower and was rejected at 45 degrees. The sound of its immediate impact was drowned by a deep gonging, as if the chestnut struck the barrel just above the water level. Saburo tried not to think about all the people in the apartment complex beneath it, lying in their beds, trying to catch five extra minutes. Everything was business as usual until an Uchiha decided to improve his nut game. 

“I have to go to another cram seminar today.” Obito sneered, plucking another from his bag. “The last time we had one of these it went on _six hours_ and everybody managed to disable their magnetic lock except for me. Three years ago, my lock picks were _paper bombs_ , dude -- now I’ve gotta learn all this fringe theory technology stuff, just in case I’m on assassination vacation in Amegakure.”

_Gong-g._

“All I ever wanted,” he continued, panting slightly from his consecutive throws. “Was to live in a world where me and Rin, K-dot and Minato-sensei all grow up together. And if not, then, I should at least try to make the kind of world where we could -- and that makes _me_ the weirdo.”

Saburo wanted to apologize again, suddenly: not for himself, but on behalf of the radio tower, and the Hokage’s creeping shadow -- and Konoha’s delightful, oblivious citizenship. He even wanted to apologize for the deceased Lord Fourth. Obito had made it clear he didn’t want apologies but Saburo thought the world owed him one anyway. After all, instead of taking steps to eradicate the circumstances which led 12-year-olds to die at each other’s sides, it was erecting big giant dicks on the rooftops, and singling out the Uchiha unfairly in ninja class. 

“I don’t think that makes you weird.” 

“Oh yeah?”

The next thing he knew Saburo was feeling a bit lighter and had Obito... just moved? He mounted the center railing again with just one foot, and thrust out his arm -- 

“How important is this to you?”

Captured against the laboring dawn and distant stone faces, the shape of a camera fell from the shinobi’s hand and caught so sharply on its strap it was flung upwards once more, and by the time it settled spinning dangling from his fist Saburo’s entire blood supply had puddled in his toes. 

It didn’t stop him from stumbling forward, and in a few steps he was at the railing, reaching. The Uchiha forced him back to arm’s length with his free hand. Desperately, stupidly, Saburo fought with his scarred side, and was easily fended off. Obito never even turned to face him. It was like his hand knew where he was going to be before he moved; he invented countermoves for even the wildest, most unrefined strikes on the spot; the guy’s forearm was made of _steel_. In the end, Obito caught him in an unfriendly grip around the wrist and his heel came smashing down on his ankle in a way that paralyzed his whole leg. Saburo was left heaving with the impression that he hadn’t touched the one-eyed Uchiha at all.

His voice came to him, just a deeper rasp than the biting wind. “There’s something wrong with this world. I can see where it’s heading, I just can’t -- ”

The wind rose and Saburo couldn’t distinguish his words from its wail; he didn’t know if Obito finished the thought, if he was even capable of it. Anyway, Saburo wasn’t listening: he desired his camera above all other things; and not because it was his _camera_ for fuck’s sake but because, in those few seconds before First Light, reaching for proof of his existence on a shitty swollen ankle, Saburo thought he finally saw Obito for the sad, sweet and dark thing he truly was. He even thought he'd make a good Hokage, someday.

Eventually the sun broke, the wind broke, everything broke and Obito heaved a sigh like the legendary turtle with the weight of a wasting world on its back.

“Here ya go, kid.” He released him and shoved the camera into Saburo’s stomach in a way that nearly winded him. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” he said, light and choked. “It was -- a fair point.”

With a _snap_ Obito ripped his goggles off his head and fell to a seat with his back to the railing and the Hokages past. He raked both his hands over his head and pulled loose some stray brown hairs around the back of his neck. 

“I’m still shedding, like a -- “ a breeze carried the hair away, and the jōnin rethought his options, then went with the obvious anyway. “Motherfucker.”

Saburo stood tilted on his good side, camera secured between his palms. He felt very grateful, all of a sudden.

“Three years ago,” Obito continued, gruff. “I could go to the market before a mission, and buy soap and shampoo for the road. Now -- I go to the _wrong_ market, sometimes, and then when I get there there’s, like, sixty different kinds of soap, and some are just for your face, or your feet, or your butt hairs -- and now I guess there’s different kinds for chicks, and you can’t buy the chick kind, even if lavender and honey sounds kind of nice.”

Saburo stifled a giggle. 

“All this shit is changing, so fast. Konoha isn’t the cereal bowl I grew up in, man, and I’m not surprised. It’s not like I didn’t think anything would change _ever_ , but… “

He yanked some hair from behind his ear and Saburo winced; he wasn’t entirely sure the little clump was ready to go. 

“Why is it all the wrong things?” Obito finished. The dewy breeze carried away the slain hairs, and he dropped his hands to his knees, then fanned his knees to the concrete, then pushed his legs out straight. Nothing was ever good enough, anymore.

He wasn’t looking at him so Saburo felt it was safe to shuffle closer. He lowered himself to the walkway not so close to the ledge and a polite distance from the older shinobi’s scarred side.

He cleared his throat. “Has everything really changed for the worse?” 

“ _Don’t_ do that,” the Uchiha snapped. 

“What?”

“Don’t make me talk about him.”

“You brought him up first.”

Obito snorted, lifted one hand behind his neck, then reached for his pile of clothes and started to pull on his gloves.

The pons on the knuckles glowed faintly. He huffed the prologue to a bitter laugh. “After I woke up, even Fugaku sent someone to my room. They said I could stay with the clan, in the compound. As if they ever gave a damn about me before. _Ch_ \-- no, I dodged the cards and the flowers and all the nice empty voices and I got back into it my own way. I got followed for a while, too, by these ANBU-looking guys, but all they did was camp out in the trees while I trained. Trained all the time. Had nothin’ to do but train, really. The only time I could get everybody to shut up was when kunai were flying.”

Obito’s eye was steely but the morning broke softly over his scars and they looked almost pretty that way, naked under the sunlight. “ _Bakashi_ didn’t show his face once, in all that time, and anybody who knew him even a little bit would know well enough to expect that, from a guy so handy with masks and Substitution jutsus. But I admit part of me wondered if maybe he was dead too, and someone just forgot to tell me.

“After a couple weeks I went to Mission Control and tried to get back on the registry, but they declined. I asked them to at least put me back on active status so I could collect training points and get paid -- I couldn’t even afford my rent -- but they declined. So I broke something that looked important, said fight me, and they declined again.”

“Medical leave didn’t cover you?” Saburo asked. 

“Normally it does, yeah. But I discharged myself, and once my name was on those papers I was back in the village reserves, but it didn’t remit the inactive status. I was broke, alone, and too proud to go back to the Uchiha compound. It was times like those when Minato-sensei would put me up for a night or two.”

“What did you do?”

Obito outstretched his arms and started to exercise his hands and forearms by flexing his fingers into five-point stars and then clenching them into fists, stars to fists, and back again. 

“I went back to training.” He answered, staring at his flickering knuckles. “And the exact same day, a couple hours into it -- or more, I don’t remember -- I felt somebody watching me. It wasn’t the same presence as the ANBU goons from before, it was something else -- and dude, all I remember is stopping to suck down some water, looking around for less than one _sec_ ond, and making direct fucking eye contact with captain non-confrontational himself, at, like, a ridiculous distance.”

Obito seemed to think it was funny so Saburo eked a laugh. 

“I think he stepped down from ANBU to watch me,” Obito went on, sobering. He dropped his hands into his lap and looked down at his gloves turned palm-up. “Because after that no one followed me, and I got a letter saying my active status was restored. They even agreed to let me test for my jōnin colors. I don’t know if he did that, too. All I knew was, I hated everything and especially him and I wanted to be left alone. Then I moved in.”

“Why?” said Saburo. 

Obito looked ready to be angry at the question, but instead he shuffled around 180 degrees to cross his arms over the center railing and dangle his legs over the ledge. He fit his chin into the crook of his elbow and stared into the rising sun, glum. 

“Um,” he said. “Not sure. Maybe because, when I wanted everything to disappear and stop bothering me, Kakashi’s the only thing that did. And then finally I was alone, pissed off at the world and about to be homeless. I guess that’s when I sort of broke down. And for a second I really wished he was there. That’s when we made eye contact all the way across the training ground and I told him I was crying because I choked on my water.”

Obito unfolded his arms and his near hand flickered out to fist itself in the front of Saburo’s shirt. He eyed him darkly over the railing, with just the red patch. “If you tell him _any_ of that, I will fong you, flay you, cut your flesh into strips, and weave it into a basket. And if you’re still alive, I’ll mail it to your mom with directions to your disgusting skinless body -- ”

“I won’t say anything!” He squeaked, just to make it stop. “I promise!”

“Actually, go ahead,” the older shinobi said, suddenly loosening his grip and dropping the arm. “I don’t care. No one will believe you.”

“We’re not even going together, you know." Obito continued without prompting, a crease in his brow like he didn’t know what was true anymore. “We were just playing you. He started it with that dumb thing about the bite-marks. Then that shit on the bus, and I tried to get back at him, but I'm not -- “

The Uchiha exhaled audibly through his nose. “Okay, technically, he wasn’t lying the first time, those girls really _did_ ask me a bunch of stupid embarrassing questions -- but I got those bites from our dickhead gatekeeper’s dog. The curfew is midnight but he’s supposed to unlock the gates for village shinobi; I got back late one night and didn’t feel like getting another fucking notice from the landlord for jumping the gate, so I thought I’d knock and ask the gatekeeper to let me in. But I woke up his little dog, which hates me like sin -- and it started barking like a maniac. I had to kick it just to get it off my fucking leg, which pissed off the gatekeeper; the barking at three in the morning pissed off the landlord; and we got another notice in the mail which pissed off Kakashi. But... I mean -- whatever. Shit happens, right?”

“Right.” Saburo amended the phrase just slightly in his head: shit happens _to you_ , Obito.

“Fuck the projects, I can’t wait to get out of there.”

Saburo hummed his agreement and sincerely meant it.

“People are gonna treat you like dirt wherever you go, so at least let me go home to a washing machine. You know what I’m saying?”

“I get it -- ” said Saburo. “If you can’t get the dignity, then at least the basic amenities.” 

This seemed to bring Obito pause. “Let me ask you something, kid -- you’re one of those paper people, right?”

“Uh,” he hoped he wasn’t inviting another beating. “Yeah.”

“You’ve had a million chances to take that picture.” Obito mused. “You’ve got more than enough dirty from me and K for a good story -- so what’s the deal? Are you waiting for the right moment, or planning a documentary series?”

“I, just,” He cursed himself and whichever god had cursed him with lousy nerves. “I assumed all that stuff was, off the record.”

Obito snorted. “That wouldn’t stop most people.”

Saburo sighed and threw his chips in with the truth. “Look, man. I write for the gardening column.”

When the scarred jōnin was finished laughing, his smile lingered. And Saburo felt pretty proud of that; he would do it again for that smile, even if it meant making a fool of himself. 

“So? Make it the most interesting column of the year,” he suggested. 

“Nah,” said Saburo. “I couldn’t. My editor would kill me. Strictly buds and blossoms, she said. The gardening column is supposed to be motivating, and romantic.”

“And she picked you?”

“Clearly, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Obito laughed again.

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was so nice hearing from everybody. i aint do it for the money thats for sure~
> 
> as usual art brought to u by the fool (with one obvious deviation from the storyline, but i wasn't gonna put a nikon in his hand folks sorry)


	4. interlude: NFWMB (no one fucks with my baby)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> interlude!

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By the time they reached her, Auntie only had six sugarfeet left. 

Rain had started to fall in a pale gray veil over the dark streets. Obito was forced to push his goggles up to see anything, shielding his dinner under his jacket like a seller of secret wares. He just tried to ignore the staring. 

Between completing the damn B-rank, waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to Kakashi’s cutthroat pace through the Shivering Forest, and then wiping out those grimy bandits from the village quarry, Obito was zapped -- zooted, fit to drop. It had been the longest day of his life even before his teammate confused the shit out of him. 

Just because they spent the last three days sharing body heat and uncomfortable jokes to stay alive didn’t mean he was suddenly okay with being teased and manipulated for some asshole’s idea of a joke. 

_Last time I ever take public transit._ Obito thought savagely. 

The rain had thickened from a veil to a sheet by the time they reached the apartment complex, and Obito had to stand around getting pummeled under the thread-count while Kakashi made niceties with the gatekeeper. He felt more like a dog on a leash than the little dog on the leash glaring at him from the gatehouse window. 

He opened the gate for them and Obito still thought the guy was a bastard, but his teammate patiently reminded him that the gatekeeper lived in a four-by-9 hovel next to the bicycle garage on the ground level, and inside that double-wide coffin was a cot, a rice cooker, and a radio -- only that little dog for company. It was a poorly paid, miserable job. And apparently Obito sometimes came off like an absent-minded ruffian. He didn’t know what that meant, really -- but when Kakashi said it, it sounded like _knuckle-dragging thug_ and that made Obito want to hit him with his fists. 

“ _Obito --_ ” There came a shout. “ _The water!_ ”

“Fuck _o-off!_ ” He was hollering back, before his roommate could finish. 

Honestly. Some people thought just because they were hot shit in their own world that they could push him around, pin him down with unerring logic, wind him up to a damn cardiac event with pale fingers and cute moles --

Obito cursed again as he shuffled around to put his opposite side under the spray, gritting his teeth against the discomfort of hot water running over his scars. Hot things felt warm and cold and tingly; cold things felt just tingly; and anything warm or room temperature felt like nothing at all on the surface of his skin, sometimes. He felt things in halves: the texture of the wind on his face but not its chill; the dull temperature of the teacup but not its pressure on his arm until he’d already knocked it off the table. Clothes still bothered him but not as much as they used to. 

There were dead spots and problem spots, places where Obito couldn’t bear to be touched, and places that ached from the barest caress. He was a twisted sack of scar tissue and some days Obito felt too monstrous for the daylight.

He had to put all his doubts and vanity beneath him when he was working or training, but cramped in his own company those shadows rose up and closed in around him -- he really was dead last in his clan. He was a half-rate shinobi with late-blooming Sharingan and he was too gnarly-looking to even marry up and further the Uchiha legacy. 

Not to mention he was probably impotent as a godless priest since that thing with the rock. Obito used to get hard-ons for _dango_ sticks and now it was like he and his nads were speaking totally different languages. 

When all the cards were down, Obito’s best option was getting killed in action. At least then people might remember him kindly. 

When he lifted the heels of his palms from his eyes, the water had gone cold. Obito slowly rose from his crouch and caught himself before crashing head-first into the tile wall. Sometimes he got light-headed just going up the dumb stairs. 

The period between injury and recovery was every shinobi's worst nightmare; you went from being exceptionally good at most things to suddenly exceptionally bad at ordinary things. You’re a war hero till you get out of bed and realize you can’t piss straight.

Obito pulled on his sleep clothes in a half-feeling daze. The bathroom was the size of a broom closet and didn’t even have a door, really -- just a patterned screen that didn’t close properly. There wasn’t a bath so much as a hose and a drain in the middle of the floor, and no mirror inside which was something of a blessing. The only sink in the apartment was in the kitchen: an industrial bucket set into the counter over a concrete trough. It was stained gold from a hundred years of previous tenants, and the one day they tried to cook. It leaked terribly. 

Obito shook his demons from his heel on the way out the doorless room, but some were more clingy than others. He was half tingly from the water and his left side had the shivers. The rainy season was a bitch and the concrete crap-shoot that they lived in harbored the cold. It didn’t bother him normally but as an arrogant aside it really bit ass because it meant Obito was uncomfortable for hours while his skin adjusted after bathing.

Oh, and his fucking hair was falling out.

He made tea. Something different this time: a kind of buckwheat tea that came in single paper envelopes. Bunzo-sensei gave it to him and Obito was crazy for it because it tasted like burnt rice water and you could eat the buckwheat afterward. 

He did his push-ups while it steeped. 50 before he went to sleep, 50 when he woke up. Simple stuff like tea and exercising made him feel human. But, some days, only half. 

It was always happenstance that the two of them gathered around the common area before bed. Obito would make tea, and do his push-ups. Kakashi would read, or meditate. Often they used the time to pack for missions or go over their objectives, operations plans and orders. Sometimes they were feeling lush and Kakashi would roll something that got them talking and swearing and hollering together for hours or until the neighbors complained. More often lately they wrestled, provoked or unprovoked. Obito wasn’t in the mood for that tonight, though, because they’d done it a million times throughout the day, including outside the gates of the damn city, and immediately after getting off the green line. Strangleholds and knuckles to the stomach don’t normally confuse Obito but with Kakashi they did. 

“Would you kindly… “ he began, waiting for his teammate to look up from his wretched book. “Un-ass yourself from my spot?”

“Oh, I didn’t realize -- ” he says, mild. But Obito was already tingly and upset, and made moreso by the fact he couldn’t see Kakashi’s mouth move under his mask. There wasn’t really any explanation he could give that would prevent an argument. 

“What do you mean, ya didn’t _real_ ize? I sit there every night, it’s my _spot_ \-- “

Obito had a few more points on deck when Kakashi raised his hands in the air and abandoned his position, side-stepping along the table to the opposite end of the couch where he belonged. It might’ve appeased Obito, if he didn’t have to look at the cover of the latest issue of _Makeout Paradise_ held aloft in one of his surrendering hands as Hatake inched by. Fucker. 

Obito fell into his corner spot and propped his toes up against the edge of the table just as Kakashi did the same on the other side. And that made him feel kind of aggressive, for some reason. “Why do you always try an’ start fights on purpose?”

“I guess,” Kakashi sighed like he was bored of the page he was looking at. “It’s the only way you’ll talk to me.”

Obito felt his heart seize as anger and surprise collided in his chest at once. “That’s funny, ‘cause _yes_ terday, you called me an _oxygen thief_ for talking so much.”

His roommate’s chest rose and fell with a silent sigh. “Maa, Obito. That’s when you were bitching about your assessment scores, and that cram seminar, again -- “

“Are you kidding me? I’m not allowed to be mad about that?” He clenched his fists because he wanted to shred the book in his hands, stuff it into a bag, and burn it. “Were you _there_ when Bunzo-sensei asked me what _chem-light_ batteries were used for?”

“Huh? There’s no such thing as -- “

“I know that _now!_ ”

“Obito…” Kakashi began, in a frowning tone.

“Bunzo-sensei is such a bastard,” Obito rushed on. “He’s the type of guy who, when they tell ya to line up nut-to-butt at all those public ceremonies, _actually_ stands with his nuts against your butt -- ”

“Holy shit,” Kakashi’s eyes curled and he started to cackle, but probably no one had ever told the Copy Nin that he came off like an insensitive ass, sometimes. “Has that happened?”

Obito hesitated, sipped at his tea, then leaned over his knees to plant the mug on the cluttered table. “No, but -- when I look at him, I’m afraid it might.”

Kakashi shook his head and chuckled to himself but continued to read. “I won’t let anybody put their nuts on you, b.”

“But he _has_ \-- “ he insisted. “I mean, metaphorically he _has_ put his nuts on me, every class, and you don’t do shit.”

“You’re grumpy.” Kakashi concluded. 

Obito knew that. He knew that he should be dealing with this stuff himself, and he didn’t actually want his teammate to interfere. Bunzo-sensei was right, anyway; Obito had goosed his recovery and pulled strings to get back on the frontlines, and now he had a lot of slack to pick up -- and he wasn’t doing it. Not fast enough for chem locks and magnetic batteries, anyway.

“Didn’t he give you that tea?” Kakashi accused.

“What -- that? No -- “

“Yeah-h, I remember,” he hummed. “ _Buck_ wheat. He said it would strengthen your chakra network, and keep you from getting sick in the cold. Bunzo-sensei _likes_ you -- ”

“No way, man. He said something about killing my free radicals. It sounded like brainwash.”

“Dude,” Kakashi dropped his hands, and finally, his book. “Free radicals are _toxic_.”

“Ugh, shut up -- “ Obito snapped. “Dork!”

“Hey!” His roommate barked at him, insistent enough to draw Obito’s good eye around to him. “What’re you so mad about?”

What could he even say? The _weather?_ All those sad little injustices that paled in comparison to being _alive?_ Obito lifted one hand to the back of his neck, started a search for loose hair. 

“Oh, so now you want to listen to me.”

Kakashi sighed, and Obito heard him shifting around. “Listen, I only told you to shut up about cram because it’s not worth even the energy it takes to talk about. Bunzo-sensei is a bald old burnout. And if you say the word, I will staple his ball-bag to his inner thigh and tell him never to fuck with you again.”

This pleased Obito enough for him to turn. He leaned his left side into the back of their rigid couch and drew up his left knee alongside it. “For-real?” He mumbled. 

The Copy Nin reshuffled his long legs and tugged each of his sleeves up to the elbow like he’d just realized he was even bigger than his reputation. He _tsk_ ed. “ _Yeah_ , man. But, that doesn’t mean he’s not right. You have good instincts, a nice hook; you’re a terrific bullshit artist -- but you lack basic skill sets. It’s a liability on a mission.”

Obito felt most things in halves. But when it came to Kakashi, he felt the sting and the chill. He pulled up his other leg and drove his palms into his eyes. 

“Obito, don’t do this,” he heard him say in his muffled monotone. “I don’t know what the fuck to do when you’re like this.”

“I’m gonna be a bald old burnout,” he murmured. 

“What? No -- “ His voice inched closer, clearer, and Obito wondered if he’d taken his mask down. “You just have to stop pulling your hair out, b. And, like, listen to Bunzo-sensei instead of daydreaming all the time.”

“Fuck off -- “ He protested. “I don’t do either of those things.”

“Well, why do you spend so much time staring out the window with that grumpy look on your face?”

Obito shook his head, drove his palms into his eyes harder. He felt Kakashi take a seat in front of him. 

“They used to give medicine to kids like that when I was little.”

“You’re trying to piss me off,” he growled.

“I’m trying to make you look at me,” Kakashi corrected. “And talk, if you want. About what’s bothering you.”

Obito fell silent. He considered the offer. Then: “It’s right in _front_ of me.”

“Okay, listen,” said Kakashi, and while he spoke his hands circled Obito’s ankles, and he leaned his weight over them like he was trying to drag him back to earth. “I meant what I said before; I want us to be friends as long as we breathe. If it’s too much like this, I can -- move out. And, I could probably get somebody reassigned to -- then _what?_ ”

Obito was shaking his head. 

The weight over his ankles increased. “Tell me what you need, idiot. If you don’t, I won’t be able to help.”

“I just, don’t understand,” Obito began, and shifting his palms from his eye sockets meant stars in his good one and a bone-deep ache in the other. “How you can say nice stuff, that makes me feel better, after the longest most ass-flavored day of my life, and then follow it up with something insensitive and nasty like I need any _more_ of that.”

As he eased open his watery eye the light went spotty, but Kakashi appeared to be thinking. His mouth twisted down a little on one side. “I guess, we’re both fucking idiots.”

Obito snorted. It felt good to argue with Bakashi sometimes, but it felt good to smile at him too, especially at home where they could both let their guard down, more or less. 

He reached out with one arm, curled it around his neck and Kakashi turned his head to the side like he knew what was coming. Obito bumped his nose against his cheek. It reminded him of the first time he ever had: the day his sixteen-year-old friend found him in a field of fucking rye on the edge of a breakdown. They’d shared an uncomfortable joke, and then an awkward bro hug that became more awkward when Obito realized he’d invited his old teammate to his blind side -- and in turning to see him, bumped his nose against his cheek. Not brilliant, but, he and Kakashi were sort of like two things that didn’t naturally meet in the wild.

Obito yawned and decided they were done arguing tonight. He settled his chin over his teammate’s shoulder and felt Kakashi’s hands loosen around his ankles. He was so tired he wouldn’t mind staying there forever. “Why does Genma think we’re banging?”

Kakashi spoke with his usual quiet boredom. “I think of Genma when I need a sociopath’s take on a situation.”

“And Raidō?”

“Those two sprung into existence from the same mother-polyp.”

“You’re just gonna discredit all my witnesses, huh? What about that newspaper kid?”

Kakashi shifted and Obito pulled back to cross his arms over his knees. “You started that,” he said. 

Obito went from zero to incensed on the spot. “No _you_ did!”

“At least _I_ never lied -- ” 

“No, but you implied,” he snapped back. “You implied pretty damn hard -- “

“What’s your problem? _You’re_ the one who said I was in love with you!”

“Yeah -- and I expected you to say something snarky, and that would be that!”

“Guess I’m not as good a bullshit artist as you are,” Kakashi replied lowly. 

“You’re _just_ as good a bullshit artist as I am,” Obito shot back on auto-pilot. “That’s why you don’t have any other friends -- nobody fucking knows who you really are!”

“Oh, _you’re_ one to talk,” he said, venomous. “I can’t believe I’m getting pack mentality advice from an _Uchiha_. You’re so concentrated on your own anger I have to start a fight just to get you to acknowledge me.”

Obito hated being lumped in with his clan and Kakashi knew that -- he was trying to piss him off again. 

“Let go,” Obito ordered. “I’m going to sleep.”

For an instant his grip tightened and Obito narrowed his eye, feeling the tension in the air. There were a thousand things you could do with a good grip on someone’s ankles and he had to be prepared for any number of violent ends. 

Instead he let go, and since he had nothing more to gain and needed to feel like he was above it all -- Kakashi got up and started to walk away. 

“Classic, Kakashi,” Obito spat. “Say you wanna talk but all you do is run away from everything.”

He knew he’d bit deep enough because his roommate paused with one heel in the air and returned to the mouth of the hallway that contained his bedroom, the front door, and the bathroom.

“Say that with your fucking chest.”

Shallow taunting and verbal provocation didn’t ever get the best of Obito in the field, but with Kakashi it did. It was just the way he said things, sometimes, that turned him into an animal. 

Obito was already moving from the couch as he spoke. He flung off his shirt and charged his roommate, and they went down in a clatter of knees and elbows and chewed up curses. 

Eventually the downstairs neighbors knocked and while Kakashi made niceties Obito fled to his room down the opposite hall, with a throbbing like a bruise forming on his face.

He chose the room by the porch because he liked the corny traditional music that floated up from Green Lake Park night and day, but he couldn’t deny the extra lack of insulation made it breezy at best. Obito crawled under his heavy blankets without finishing his tea or collecting his shirt, and his eye leaked a little but not in a sad way, just from the stress, he thought. Over-excitement after a long day. He decided he agreed with Kakashi. They were both fucking idiots. And they both ran away from everything. 

At some point so late even the music from the park had grown faint, Obito got up in a half-feeling daze and shuffled down the opposite hall to take a piss. Then he shuffled across the hall, paused on the threshold of his roommate’s bedroom, and went in. He dropped to a crouch where the blankets were already turned down, slid in and settled on his left side to face the door. Kakashi rolled up behind him, threw his arm over his middle, and shoved his nose behind his ear like he always did. 

“ _Is this okay?_ ” he would murmur. And Obito promptly went to sleep. 

They probably wouldn’t talk about that in the morning, either. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	5. off days pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which saburo is saddled unfairly with far too much S-rank romantic tension.

[off days pt. 2](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/off-days-pt-2?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

Obito shaded his eyes in the direction of dawn and smiled like he’d forgiven it some slight. 

“Well,” he said, gathering his heels beneath him. “I don’t know too much about gardening, or that other stuff, but I know a thing or two about bud.”

The jōnin jumped to his feet, wobbled there for a moment, and loped over to his belongings by the center column. While he rooted around in his bag, a scrap of cloud drifted over the platform; its foggy breath hit the back of Saburo’s throat and left him feeling both waterlogged and weightless. It was a baker’s dawn -- cold and unforgiving. He felt the wind tooling around beneath them; the composite steel shuddered and thrummed under his feet, and he hugged his knees to his chest. He knew the Halcyon couldn’t _possibly_ be swaying, but -- well, it really wigged him out. 

Obito shuffled back over with his feet half in his sandals, jacket over his bare shoulders, and a slim paper cone the length of a finger in one hand. 

“Kakashi rolled this,” he said proudly, dropping to his heels and tipping back onto his rear. “He’ll be so pissed if I start before he gets here.”

Obito held out the pre-rolled cone until Saburo was confused enough to reach out and take it gingerly in hand. 

“Twist off the end,” said the jōnin, biting the fingertips of one glove and pulling it off.

“Um -- what?" He floundered. "How?”

“Just like the other end,” Obito said impatiently, leaning backward to pat the pockets on his shorts. “I can’t do it. I’m clumsy and I get the shakes with rice paper.”

Saburo took the wide end of the cone between his forefinger and thumb just as the wind began wailing again, and hastily turned the open end around to avoid losing any of the murky green crumbs inside. Then with a vein near bursting on his forehead he pinched the delicate paper and twisted it several times, right down to the goods, until it was sealed off like a homemade firecracker. 

“I tried to light one of these with my Fireball jutsu once,” said Obito, taking the joint in slow-motion and producing a lighter in his opposite hand. “I thought it would be a neat trick, you know. For the girls.”

“Did it work?”

Obito drew up one of his knees, and with the added wind-shield, a few flicks of the lighter, and a couple of quick starting breaths, he managed to get the thing going. Smoke gathered around his bent leg and for a second the jōnin's hairy knee looked like a mountain rising from the clouds. 

"Kakashi was so pissed. You’ve never seen him so pissed. It’s really something.” His arm unfurled and Saburo stared at the twisted paper burning between his fingers.

Saburo took it. His first puff sat on his tongue long enough to leave a flavor behind, then departed the way it came -- light, dry, and kind of fruity. His second puff actually went down his throat and felt more like a jagged triangle of glass that broke up into a bunch of smaller jagged triangles of glass inside his chest, and Saburo coughed and coughed and coughed. 

Obito laughed.

Somewhere beneath them, a bird sang its morning greeting. The rising sun warmed the dimpled steel platform little by little, and Saburo gradually settled down, his throat raw, his ankle throbbing, a heaviness on his eyelids.

“Ah, fuck, kid -- “ said the Uchiha, rescuing the joint from his shaking hand. “Once you realize there’s no such thing as good or evil, it’s much easier to play the villain.”

Obito's jacket whispered with the smallest movement. The wind held its breath and Saburo watched smoke spew from the scarred jōnin's mouth and settle in slowly moving wreaths around him. The following exhale travelled in a reverse waterfall from his mouth to his nose and then cycled again out his mouth. 

Saburo found himself thinking what a strange, ventilated sack of liquid and semisolid the human body was, and he wondered how it could look beautiful, nonetheless. 

“Konoha is the only place in the world you can get green year-round,” said the older shinobi. “That’s why they say it’s _eternal spring_ around here.”

Saburo snorted. Suddenly all the postcards at the tourist stops in town with their smarmy greetings from ‘the city of eternal spring’ seemed sadly misguided.

“I’m serious,” Obito insisted. “Ever been outside the city? The shit grows wild, all over the hills, just beyond the wall. All natural, down and dirty -- the weed of the Hidden Leaf is our longest-lived export. Go to Tiger Leaping Gorge and see for yourself.”

Saburo snorted again, and wiped some excess water from his eyes. “I don’t think that’s what my editor had in mind.”

“You can interview Kakashi!” Obito continued, gaining momentum. “He’s a dealer, you know. Used to have a little growing operation in my room, actually. But now he’s outsourced it to some guy in the mountains. Shinobi make great dealers: we travel all over the continent; we come with built-in security and no boundaries; plus, we build relationships with our customers out of mutual trust and respect. Hokages come and go -- but the weed chain stays strong.”

Saburo clapped politely. 

“Thanks,” Obito grinned at him foolishly. “You don’t have to credit me, if you write about it.”

He offered him another taste of Konoha’s mightiest export, and Saburo declined politely. 

“I don’t know too much about gardening,” Obito said again, wheeling his arm back in. He stared at the joint, then allowed it to rest. In Saburo’s periphery, the jōnin appeared to be holding a long, twisting blue ribbon trapped between his knuckles. “Don’t tell anyone this, but -- I’ve noticed, lately, after I train in a certain area for a few days, all these little flowers start growing there. Weird, huh?”

“Weird,” Saburo agreed. “What kinda flowers?”

“Um,” he hummed. “Not sure.”

“Well -- what’d they look like?”

“Like, purple, sort of.” Obito concentrated. “Veiny. And wet.”

“They sound -- disgusting.” Saburo guessed the Uchiha had never won any awards for his poetry. 

“So I started thinking,” he continued, a faraway look in his eyes. “Maybe if I keep a pot of dirt in my room, shit will grow in it.”

“Yeah,” Saburo thought that sounded reasonable. “Maybe.”

“K thinks I’m, you know -- bananas,” said Obito, lowering himself to his back on the platform and lifting one hand behind his head to cushion it against the steel. Saburo caught a glimpse of underneath his arm as his jacket cinched up -- and even Obito's armpit hair was terrible and black. “You gotta _plant_ something, to make it grow, he says. But, sometimes things grow where you never even made a place for them. You know what I’m saying?”

Saburo nodded his head, feeling fuzzy. “I get it. It’s like this one time, at Green Lake Park, I took a picture of some butterflies eating the eyes out of dead fish.”

The scarred jōnin nodded his head at the rising sun, brow furrowed. Then: “Yeah, that’s pretty weird too.”

“He’s gonna be around any minute, by the way,” he continued. “Only reason it’s taking so long is I know he’s at the Memorial Stone around now. I hope you don’t mind. I know he’s a, beautiful, _dick_ \-- ”

“No, it’s okay,” Saburo hurried, coughing again in his rush to defend the Copy Nin. He pieced together the last fragments of his question. “Do you guys always -- together -- up here?”

“Uhh, no.” Obito chuckled. “I never tell him where I’m gonna be, usually.”

“Then, how -- ?”

“I dunno. Sometimes I think it’s these eyes we share.” Obito shrugged his shoulders against the platform, then pushed himself up to his elbows and narrowed his eyes on the Hokage Rock again. “And other times I think it’s just that he’s a stalker and in love with me.”

He tipped his head back and Saburo followed his gaze in time for a flickering shadow to become the shape of the Copy Nin over the ladder hole. 

“K-dot!” Obito cried, with excessive cheer.

“Baked,” Kakashi accused darkly, throwing his bag down with two hands and stalking over to them. 

“It’s sunrise. Wake and bake, my love.” He pointed out, still smiling lazily. Then he glanced at Saburo and added: “Just kidding.”

As Kakashi came within spitting distance Obito flung out an arm and drove a knuckle into the side of his knee. “He’s like my brother.”

“Agh,” Hatake growled. “What’s your problem?”

The white-haired jōnin, whom Saburo considered unyielding and precise, rushed his teammate and bore him down to the platform in a chokehold that devolved to inelegant wrestling. 

After a minute of fair and equally matched grappling, Obito lost to sheer ferocity. Kakashi introduced a knuckle into his teammate’s abdomen that probably shook his kidney from his rib cage and struck Saburo with a sympathetic twinge in his own side. Obito tried lifting his knee, presumably to hold Hatake at bay, but it became the instrument of his demise when the Copy Nin bore down on the limb until the Uchiha’s lungs were probably crushed under the weight of his own folded leg. Obito slapped the composite steel a couple times. 

At the sound of his surrender, Kakashi eased up, but didn’t release his teammate. He reached over him and plucked the forgotten joint from the platform. “I can’t believe you started without me. I _made_ this. Do you have a shred of honor?”

The Copy Nin wiggled his chin free of his mask and lifted the rice paper to his lips. With small, patient breaths he reinvigorated the flame until the paper faintly crackled as it burned. Then his chest swelled around one long inhale, and with tiny tendrils of smoke escaping his nostrils, he leaned over the forearm that trapped Obito’s leg to his chest. For a moment it looked almost as if Kakashi intended to exhale into his teammate’s mouth. 

“I told him the truth.” Obito wheezed. 

Kakashi stilled. From his position hugging his knees three feet away Saburo saw his near eye narrow. 

Long trails of smoke fled between his words: “You, ruin, everything.”

Hatake leaned back and seemed to reassess his teammate. “And what’s with this get-up? Trying for a role in a porno?”

“Shut up,” Obito grit his teeth visibly. “Nobody in your pornos looks like _me_.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Kakashi hummed.

“ _No_ , that's not -- I was just, I was hot," Obito explained. “And then it got cold. And my shirt was sweaty -- ”

“So that’s how it happened,” he affirmed, mild. 

“Fuck off.”

The jōnin disentangled; Obito groaned as his leg was released from its painful-looking clamp. Kakashi rose and fluidly fell to a seat on Saburo’s opposite side. 

“Yo,” The Copy Nin nodded his greeting. “The paper got you up this early?"

Saburo shook his head. “Actually, I was, um -- hoping for a picture of First Light.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Did you get it?”

“Sort of -- “

“Ow!” Obito yelped, and Saburo turned in time to see the scarred jōnin rubbing his ear and Kakashi’s arm withdrawing from behind him. “What was that for?”

“You wrecked his shot, didn’t you?”

“ _No -- !_ " His lie withered, and Obito deliberately looked away. “Not on purpose.”

“You didn’t wreck anything,” Saburo tried. “It was fine, really. You made it better, in fact.”

“Better how?” Kakashi snorted. “Before or after he took his shirt off?”

Saburo leaned over his knees to avoid being accidentally jostled over the ledge by the two boys as they traded punches behind his back.

Obito was the first to retreat. He got to his feet and danced quickly out of the way to avoid a jab to the kneecap, then angled his good eye at his teammate as he pulled on his gloves. “I gotta go, anyway,” he murmured. “I’m done here.”

He collected his shirt but didn’t make a move to put it on or zip his jacket, and seemed to wait for Hatake to say something about it. 

When he didn’t, Saburo took the opening. “It was nice talking to you, uh -- Obito.” he risked, then regathered his wits. “I think you’re gonna make a great Hokage. And, um -- I think your scars are pretty.”

Suspicion quickly melted to surprise, then unbridled self-satisfaction on the scarred jōnin's face. He grinned foolishly. “Thanks, man.”

“Y-yeah, uh, anytime.”

Obito flipped one hand in the direction of his teammate. “See you at cram.”

Kakashi made a noise of confirmation, then whirled around as the Uchiha started to walk away from the ledge. “Wait up -- take the rest of this.”

Obito turned and eyed the arm outstretched, and then his teammate. He lifted a hand to touch his goggles but didn’t pull them down. “You sure?”

“Yeah, go on, idiot. I’ll grab you for lunch.”

“Okay,” Obito stuffed one glove under is arm and leaned down to take the burning offering with a look of intense concentration. “Just no more snail noodles.”

Snail… noodles? Saburo shuddered. 

“I get that it’s a Hatake clan thing and all,” he continued. “And probably nostalgic for you or something, but _yeezus_ \-- ”

“You said you liked them!” Kakashi said, in earnest. Which, for Saburo, seeing the Copy Nin in earnest was like seeing a normal person in hysterics.

“I do; I like the peanuts, and the chili oil -- but every time we’re on that side of town I’m dropping hints about that new Tani place by the Waving Cat, and I thought you of all people would pick up on subtlety -- “

“That’s not subtlety, it’s --” Kakashi interrupted him. “Passive manipulation!”

Smoke waterfalled in reverse from Obito’s mouth to his nose. 

“I like river snail noodles, bro.” He said, oddly plaintive. “But can we try something new?”

“That’s all you had to say,” Kakashi muttered. Then he followed up with a quick demand: “Where are you training today? Or do I have to find you?”

Obito didn’t answer. He took another drag on the burning stub and huffed an exhale through his nose, looking down at his teammate and then over at Saburo like he’d proven a point. 

The Copy Nin rolled down to his back and reached out to grab at Obito’s nearest ankle with one hand. For a moment they didn’t seem too bothered by each other. 

Were all shinobi the heroes of their own private narrative, Saburo wondered, or did they sometimes duck the plot?

“I’m up on the black courts, today,” Obito said, and seemed to nod in his direction. “If you wanna see those flowers I was talkin’ about, kiddo.”

Saburo groaned internally. _The black courts_... He felt light-headed just thinking about Konoha’s training grounds in the treetops. 

The Uchiha kicked his heel a few times to shake off his teammate, then turned and trod back to the center column to collect the rest of his things. He packed his shirt, threw his bag over his back, and just when Saburo thought he was headed for the ladder hole, Obito bounded up to the railing, leapfrogged the high bar -- and began moving too fast for his eye to follow. Saburo’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. He stood and leaned over the railing. Far beneath them, shopkeepers were starting to open their doors; the echoing rattle of ridged iron gates being lifted could be heard for blocks, and in some shopfronts bamboo baskets were already leaking cotton-white swathes of steam into the dew-dampened streets -- soon the grills would be firing up, too, and foot traffic would swell with the early morning rush. 

The Copy Nin lurched to his feet. He seemed agitated. 

Kakashi bent to retrieve Obito’s discarded bag of nuts from the platform and scowled in the direction of dawn like it owed him something. Then in a movement so quick Saburo had to run it back a few times in his head, he flicked out an arm with a sideways whipping motion and at least three nuts went speeding from his hand. 

Only a handful of seconds went by before the unfortunate chestnuts struck the belly of the distant watertower in rapid succession. The rhythmic, booming gong created by their trifold impact was, to Saburo’s horror, a vaguely familiar sound. 

“I’ve, uh,” Saburo cleared his throat. “Heard good things about your, uh, your nut game.”

Kakashi _tsk_ ed. With a hop-skip and another sidewinding whip of his arm the jōnin sent another nut flying. "I can throw them hard enough to _stick_."

“Did I -- say something wrong?” Saburo mused. 

_Gong-g_.

“No,” he said darkly. “You said everything right. That was exactly what he needed to hear, probably.”

Kakashi dropped to the platform just as something sailed overhead and _ping_ ed off the Halcyon tower column, ricocheted, and struck the platform a few inches from Saburo’s feet before lancing off in a new direction. Saburo decided he was not a fan of the nut game, and he was getting rather sick of its players. 

“I don’t understand,” Kakashi said from his belly. “How some people are so good at that. I’ve never thought to tell him either of those things.”

“Obito doesn’t feel the cold sometimes.” He continued, and his monotone held the hint of a mournful note. “I tell him to put a goddamn shirt on, and he gets offended, and angry. If I don’t say anything it’s worse -- like, _sad_ and angry. He complains about his hair all the time and I stopped trying to tell him it’s not really falling out. That's why I got him those stupid gloves, and I've been rolling him those jays -- it's his anxious habits, man. They make the bad days worse." 

"Oh," Saburo said, surprised. "Those were really good ideas."

"I don’t know." He rubbed his tear ducts with his forefingers. "I don't know how to tell him anything. _You_ saw it; we can’t share the air for two _min_ utes before things get kinetic.”

“Kinetic?”

“ _Vi_ olent,” he clarified. 

Suddenly the Copy Nin rolled into a crouch at the ledge and folded his arms over the center railing, just like Obito had. “My poor baby,” he murmured, so quiet Saburo strained to hear. “Pulling out his hair.”

Kakashi turned his head and addressed Saburo plainly. “He's a wreck, isn't he?”

Saburo thought Obito was coping the best way he could, but he'd barely opened his mouth to respond before the jōnin ranged onward.

“You thought I was dating that guy? _Fuck._ He’s a fucking wreck. Did you really believe us? I wouldn’t." He shook his head at the mountains and coughed a single hollow laugh. "Uchihas, you know. Tradition and all that. Half his fucking clan wants me dead just for this eye. And the other half should want me dead anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Kakashi lurched to his feet, brushed himself chest to knee, and lifted one hand to his mask, but he didn’t pull it up. “I had to do something, to get him back. And -- anybody else would’ve done the same thing, in my position -- ”

He paused as if he expected an accusation of some kind but Saburo chose to stay quiet. He clutched at his camera, and watched the Copy Nin unravel. 

“In three years,” he went on. “There were times I wished he’d just died. I know how that sounds, but you don’t understand; it was the _maybe_ that killed me. Every day, watching and waiting, and all anyone could say to me was _maybe_ he’d wake up, and _maybe_ he’d walk or talk or fight again. I carried around all those effin' _maybe_ s till I thought I’d gone nuts, waiting, hoping, dreading all at once. I mean, what the fuck could I do? What do you _do_ , when they say that someone's not coming back but you're _look_ ing right at them -- it didn't make sense to me, how you could bring someone home, but not have all of them. So when some people came to me and said they might be able to make him well again, I thought, shit, nothing could be worse than the way it is now -- and I accepted.

“Special cells with regenerative properties," he continued, like it was a line from a script. "Some underground project. Sounded stupid. But I was so fucked up on uncertainty I gave them the go-ahead to treat him. It was selfish -- I didn't even think it would work, I just wanted to end _my_ suffering. Obito went into a coma and _I_ stopped living.”

“Does he know?”

“Hmm,” Kakashi hummed with a mocking edge. “Have I told my best friend, that I agreed to juice him like a lab rat just because I was sick of waiting around on a miracle? _No_.”

“Is that really how you see it?”

“No,” he said again, with less steam. “But that’s the way he’ll see it.”

“Things have changed a lot in three years,” Saburo considered, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face. “It’s probably a really confusing place to come back to.”

“So what do you think, kid?” said Kakashi, leaning his elbows over the rail. “Should I tell him?”

Saburo toyed with the straps on his camera. “When my dad died, I was five years old. His friends all told nice stories about him, and my mom told me he was killed on a mission. For a while I wanted to be a shinobi just to be like him -- people loved him so much, see, and when he died they just loved him more. Then I turned 12 and my mom told me the whole story; he was killed by friendly fire. She told me that meant one of his comrades was responsible. He was still a hero, but, that part got left out of the story.”

Saburo felt a grim weight arrive on the conversation and Kakashi shifted his shoulders. He hurried to continue. “I was kind of mad, at first -- it was easy to blame the enemy for taking my dad away, but it was a lot harder to blame his friends. It took a while but I realized I didn’t really need anyone to blame for the way things were. It wasn’t the truth that hurt me the most -- it was the fact that I spent all that time in between getting comfortable with lies, worshipping the system that got my dad killed. 

“I know it’s not exactly what you’re going through, but -- you asked me what I think,” Saburo continued. “And I think -- Konoha has a tradition of hiding uncomfortable truths.”

Kakashi toyed with a chestnut, but didn’t make a move to throw it. His Sharingan was spinning and Saburo wondered when he’d activated it.

“I don’t know, man,” he said finally. “Every time I try to tell him something it comes out all wrong. _He_ knows I’m lying and _I_ know I’m lying and that’s probably why we snap and fight over _ran_ dom shit.”

“It seems like -- ” Saburo risked. “Obito might appreciate actions, more than words.”

“Kid -- “ Kakashi deadpanned. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? All we do is fight.”

“Really?” Saburo asked, because that didn’t seem to be how Obito described their friendship. “Do things always get kinetic -- in a bad way?”

“Well, sometimes,” the jōnin mused, staring intently at the chestnut between his fingers. “He crawls into my bed at night.”

Saburo felt the hair on his arm rise. 

“It’s the only time he’ll let me hold him.”

“Then, in the morning -- ” A faint pop and crack heralded the arrival of a fucking bolt of lightning that ripped the nut to shreds. Saburo bit down on a noise of alarm. “He’s gone.” 

Kakashi closed his fist around the chestnut’s vaporized remains as the last of the static played over his wrist. “It sucks. And it’s my fault.”

Saburo sucked in a breath. “What do you mean?”

The Copy Nin turned to face him over the railing and Saburo felt the blood rise to his face, not even from the topic of conversation -- just because of how serious the guy looked. “I ruined it, dude. The first time it happened, I woke up early, and he was right there and I thought -- _ugh_.”

He turned away and dragged a hand over his face, then hunkered down over his elbows. 

“I got handsy.” He admitted. “B jumped out like the _build_ ing was on fire and since then I always wake up alone.”

 _Oof,_ Saburo thought. “That’s rough, buddy.”

“See what I mean? I can’t say what I want. I can’t act on it, either -- I’m living a huge fucking lie, but at least that’s better than driving him out altogether.”

“Maybe… ” Saburo trailed off because he didn’t want to over-interpret Obito’s words. 

“Yeah, see?” Kakashi said again. He spit over the rail. “Maybe. I’m back here with that horrible fucking _maybe_ again. I’ve been throwing vibes and, sometimes, I feel like he’s throwing them back. Then I thought on the bus, when I -- hey, you saw, didn’t you? I was looking right at you when I kissed him. Did you see what happened?”

“Uh, I looked away.” Saburo said hastily. “It seemed private.”

Kakashi uttered a sound of earnest frustration, kind of like when you bite the inside of your cheek really hard, and you’re in a ton of pain but you know you sort of caused it yourself by being too reckless and chewing without abandon. 

“I thought, for a second, he -- but I don’t know. I could’ve imagined it.”

Saburo didn’t know the answers to his problems, but he offered him his company for a few more minutes while the sun tiptoed over the horizon. 

“Um, Kakashi -- ” Saburo risked, grit his teeth and regathered his wits. “I know it might not mean much, coming from me, but -- I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

The Copy Nin took another deep breath and eyed the dawn like he’d let it off the hook, for now. For all that he was wolfish and proud, Saburo suspected Kakashi was also an inherently caring individual. Only, he seemed to care very little about most things, and very intensely about a few.

“See, that actually made me feel better. You’re pretty fucking good at that.”

He shrugged the cross-sashes of his sword higher on his shoulders, glanced down at the streets below, and returned his bored gaze to Saburo. The older shinobi arched an eyebrow like he was hiding some small amusement. “Want a lift down?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unrelated art:
> 
>    
>   
> 
> 
> love y'all.  
> i think we're gonna do k's perspective next.  
> and possibly meet bunzo sensei. 


	6. school days pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ay~  
> the pic in this chapter is a little doodley of an alley around where i used to live in cheena  
> ok
> 
> here we go

[school days pt. 1](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/school-days-pt-1?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

The skies were looking remarkably upcast when Kakashi left the place nobody named, but he warned the two overpaid sentries outside that it was certain to rain.

Nobody named the place and thusly nobody quite recognized it, either. At the hour of his arrival at its location on 2nd Street, it was a bakery advertising flower cookies and lotus cakes in the window, cramped -- as all things were cramped on 2nd Street -- between a karaoke bar and Obito’s favorite milk joint. 

As was common in the busier commercial and recreational areas of the city center, a tune was in the air, something traditional: the step-talk clamor of a koto accompanied by the occasional sigh of a bamboo flute. Kakashi had paused on his way in, between a woman selling seven colors of cabbage on a blanket and a girl in a civilian school uniform, to appraise the advertisements in the bakery window. Jasmine cookies, rose cookies, green tea cookies -- what a lot of _effort_ there seemed to be, around here. 

Kakashi walked in and the little girl in the school uniform had sneered at him. Even the sentries outside the place nobody named blended in a little _too_ well. 

Behind his eyes he felt the pluck of the koto’s thirteen strings, felt its overlapping melodies _tick_ - _tuck_ -tugging at the base of his skull. He recognized the song in the air. It relied on a pentatonic tonal system that could sometimes sound discordant, but to the trained ear it was densely interwoven layers of melody that occasionally broke apart from the larger tapestry of song with a shout like _hey, listen!_ to hit you right in your heartstrings. Now what was its name? A flower, Kakashi thought. The title of the song was certainly a flower of some kind. Cherry blossom, probably. Everybody wrote about the damn cherry blossoms, it seemed.

The song wasn’t sappy, though, like most of Konoha’s flowery traditional music. If he stood for a while and listened, it sounded ambitious. Militant.

After his meeting, Kakashi left through the same door, and found himself not in a bakery but an alleyway, on a quiet stone pathway -- cramped in the shadow of pale, seamless stone walls. The alley was lined with garden beds and the walls were hung with large framed portraits of famous chumps from ninja history, and bits of old poetry painted next to them. The murmur of an unseen water fountain rippled through the still air. Tangled masses of rusted barbed wire tousled with thick blue sprays of ivy for a seat atop the garden wall. A very old, very small woman peered suspiciously at him as he walked past. 

The sign of a good genjutsu, Kakashi thought, was when you couldn’t quite pick out its flaws.

At the mouth of the strange garden alley he rediscovered 2nd Street. The sound of the unseen fountain faded, and the tugging sensation at the back of his head loosened. Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck absently. The Sharingan made him largely invulnerable to genjutsu snares, but in the case of the place nobody named, the illusions were so much nicer to look at than the reality. The reality was -- tucked between the k-bar and the milk joint -- a grimy old concrete stairwell leading underground.

 _Konoha has a tradition of hiding uncomfortable truths_ , Kakashi remembered. The kid was right. For so long he’d known the truth and chosen the illusions. About his dad. About Root, about the whole fucking world. Tucking into idealism had made life so much more gamelike; the stakes were never too high and none of it mattered, anyway. Things like loyalty and duty came easy to him. He was a dog. The good soldier. 

The first time Kakashi approached the secret entrance on 2nd, he was ashamed to admit he hadn’t been able to dissipate the jutsu. He was accustomed to picking apart illusions in battle; Kakashi knew the feeling of eye contact with a genjutsu user, and the weight of another’s control in his cerebral nervous system. It took minimal effort to find flaws in the fabric and rip the jutsu apart from the inside. But the master tapestries which disguised the entrance to the place nobody named were not like other genjutsu he’d encountered at all. 

It took him three more seconds than he liked to admit, but Kakashi eventually figured out that the trigger was auditory; the key was the conductor was the koto, holding it all together layer upon layer upon layer. 

He didn’t know who was responsible for casting the daily mirage on 2nd Street, but he’d be interested to meet them. Kakashi had never seen genjutsu so exquisitely crafted -- his only complaint was, sometimes, they went too far; he could _smell_ the flower cakes -- he'd _felt_ the old woman's eyes on him, for fuck’s sake. It was excellent work and he wanted to copy the shit out of it.

Outside, the two overpaid sentries wore different faces: the first, a crooked woman using a fallen tree branch like a broom on the sidewalk, and the second, an older man in a wide bamboo hat smoking cigarettes on an upturned crate.

“How d’you know?” said the man in the bamboo hat. “Looks like shine to me.”

“I bet he can _smell_ the rain,” cackled the woman. “Can’tcha, dog boy?”

Kakashi nodded at the shopfront across the busy street. “When I came in, that guy was selling sun hats. Now he's putting out umbrellas.”

“So what?”

Kakashi shrugged, and moved on. The irony about his meetings at the place he could not name, with the people he could not call to mind -- not even in his head -- was that he invariably left with a lot on his mind. His favorite part of the meetings he couldn’t talk about were when they asked him what he’d ‘observed’ about his teammate in the last week. Kakashi freely told them all the lamest things he could think of. Like the other day when Obito observed a lack of the color red in their diet. Or last night after cards with Ebisu and Guy, when he told Kakashi that he didn’t recognize the toes on his right foot and thought maybe they were someone else’s. Kakashi nearly told them about the batshit pot of dirt the Uchiha was keeping in his bedroom, but then he kept that bit to himself, for some reason. 

At the hour he left the place nobody named, the long shadow of the Hokage’s Tower had claimed the secret entrance, the shapeshifting sentries, the k-bar, the milk joint, and a long swathe of 2nd Street. 

He almost stopped to buy milk but then he remembered Obito brought back his own glass bottles to be refilled, usually, and anyway he didn’t want to encourage the habit because no one in the whole Hatake clan drank milk and Kakashi thought it was sort of sick. 

_Uchihas_ , he thought. And their mutant ability to drink loads of milk. 

Maybe that was just his Uchiha, though. He didn’t know for sure. 

It was unpleasantly nostalgic being back on campus. The seminar that evening was being held in an old lecture hall at the Academy, but sometimes cram was in the training arena underground, or outdoors, or on the rooftops. Sometimes they met in a classroom just so Bunzo-sensei could take attendance before going elsewhere. Kakashi’s favorite classes -- and the only ones he showed up for at full attention -- were the nights Bunzo told them to drop everything and pair up. 

Kakashi entered the room by the rear door and spotted his teammate in the back row, already snoozing. The familiar sight helped ease his troubled mind. 

He was satisfied to see that Obito was left alone. The first few weeks back in cram had been chaos. Anybody dumped back on active duty after an extended period of leave was hot gossip; shinobi spread rumors like flesh wounds and jōnin were the very worst about it. That, and tough occupations often bred tough senses of humor to match; it would’ve been one thing to come back to the weekly seminars as eyepatch guy, or scar guy -- but eyepatch-scar-coma guy was just too much. The attention was good and bad, but mostly ugly: there were quick hi’s, side-eyes, and slide-bys, sometimes snide remarks about pity promotions, lucky breaks, and being babysat by ANBU -- anti-Uchiha sentiment in their ranks was a rare but disturbing phenomenon. 

Kakashi knew eventually all the excitement would wear itself out, but in the meantime Obito bristled and bit and snapped, and that made it worse.

Part of the reason he liked pair-up-and-fight days best was because people got to see what a savage his best friend was in the field. Obito only won about 10 percent of his fights, but it was always to rule infractions, accuracy issues, and his teammate’s own obsessive need to push himself. On the bulletin outside Mission Control, Kakashi made sure their names were always at the very top of the list for number of missions completed, training points earned, and enemies felled. In numeric terms, the team of just himself and the Uchiha had been more effective in the last month than some _ANBU_ squads. Obito pushed himself; Kakashi pushed him harder. He knew he probably resented him for it, but in the end, being top team put the village under their toes. It also saved them half of all the small-mind gossip -- the other half was just jealousy, because his best friend was fucking _sav_ age. 

Kakashi settled into his chair, tipped it back on two legs and braced his feet on the cross-bar under their table. Obito lay slumped over the desk surface with his face in his arms and his goggles perched on his head like an extra pair of eyes. There were pine needles in the hood of his jacket, and tiny twigs stuck to the material with streaks of dark sap. Some leaf fragments caught in his hair. Kakashi shook his head at his teammate and relaxed an arm over the back of his chair, started to covertly pick the forest from his back. He’d left Obito after lunch with just a few bark burns and sweat rings, and the boy had come back half tree-person and reeking. 

He was used to his roommate’s body odor by that point, but the breath of wilderness about him threw a crushed mint frozen pear smell into the mix and it drove Kakashi a little closer. He used the pad of his thumb to scrub some dirt from behind his ear and wanted to put his mouth there instead. But the last time he went with his instincts he’d ruined it with a dick graze and fuck if he was dealing with the silent treatment tonight. 

Barely even a graze, Kakashi thought. Just warming up to the outline, really. He’d fondled his teammate more inappropriately with his _eyes_ , for fuck’s sake. Kakashi had probably fondled a dozen people in that very room -- and at least two or three of his enemies -- just from accidental dick grazes while _fight_ ing, and no one ever got up _set_ about it. You can’t crawl into a guy’s bed half-naked and not expect him to try and mark the territory in the morning.

But he should’ve known better. Everything about Obito said _hands off_ and maybe that was why it felt so brilliant to fight, sometimes. 

What could he say? Kakashi thought. _I’m a dog._

He’d had it for his old teammate since before he was a bag of nuts, and up until recently he’d been patient about the hunt. Kakashi blamed puberty. The chemical and neurological processes trying to rip apart his kidness had gone largely unnoticed in his early adolescence. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen -- his comrades were taming body-wide hair growth and scoping eligible kunoichi, but nothing had interested Kakashi except demon swords, flash-bombs, and decapitation techniques. Then one day he was in his favorite comic book store and by chance picked up the first issue of _Makeout Paradise_ \-- and then he noticed he was tall, and not bad-looking, noticed people noticing him, and got serious about his relationship with his hand. 

Kakashi liked his roommate best like this, sometimes -- conked out on a hard surface with his eyes fluttering, covered in twig and pine from Konoha’s highest and most elite training courts -- so sweet and dark. Kakashi warmed his hand under the hood of his jacket and tried to focus on his book. The latest release was a filler issue between the _Makeout Paradise_ series and the next arc, _Makeout Violence_ , which Kakashi was itching for. The filler book was a slim volume titled _Makeout: Walk the Plank_ and he was enjoying it, so far. He wasn’t a tentacle guy, but it was nice to see some alteration from the usual character inserts. Obito was right: nobody in these books looked like him. Nobody in the whole world of adult novels and film looked like Obito, probably. 

A shadow fell over the back row and Kakashi tried to send it _brush off_ signals, but they went largely unheeded, and when the shadow settled over their coveted back row aisle seats, he felt it deciding whether to speak up or slide by. In the end, Genma did both. 

“What’s up, Kash?” He said in his wheedling voice as he wheedled by. Puberty had lent a wiry-ness to Shiranui Genma’s already lean frame; he could tell the poison user had a difficult time keeping his jaw free of creeping shadows; and like Obito, he had yet to fully settle into his voice, and still cracked on occasion. “Growing anything new?”

Kakashi glanced meaningfully at his snoozing teammate, and dared his infrequent customer and fairweather friend to keep talking. 

When Genma smiled it always leered on one side, twisted down where the senbon needle settled in the corner of his mouth. It was clear he wasn’t leaving without a conversation. 

“Maybe.” Kakashi answered.

Genma shifted foot to foot, caught in an awkward space between the end of their table and the backs of the chairs in the row in front of them. “Front me a hot half, man. I’ll get you back next week.”

“I’m not fronting you anything,” he said, trying to remain calm and level. “Until you pay up for that _’quick quarter’_ you swallowed last month.”

“Ah-ha, what?” Genma’s eyes grew wide and he bent at the knees, the little actor. “Are you still hung up on that? Come on, Kash. Have a heart -- you know that was for my mom’s rehab. Her squad got attacked by _sand_ -worms -- "

“Yeah, we heard. A million times already.” Kakashi snapped, as quietly as he could, but the lying sociopath was starting to annoy him. “Be _quiet_.”

He dropped his hand from his teammate’s back and leaned forward to shake _Walk the Plank_ at his classmate. “No bread; no green. It’s simple as that.”

“Okay, okay. Point taken. But look -- let’s make a trade. What about this?”

Kakashi was beginning to suspect the poison user had purchased his graduation certificate from the counterfeits guy on 116th. How he’d got his jōnin colors on top of that was another mystery, however. He was good in combat -- had the potential to be excellent, actually -- but Genma was the type of adolescent who couldn’t read a social situation if you spelled it out in cereal and shoved his face in it. 

The wiry jōnin jerked his hand from his pocket and brought it down on the desktop with a resounding metallic _slap_. Obito snapped out of his doze, and Kakashi very nearly snapped into a rage. 

“I don’t want your meal tokens, slime.” He said on his lowest decibel. “That’s not even worth a gram.”

Obito’s sleep-addled snort. 

“A _meal_ token?” His teammate rubbed a knuckle into his eye. “Get real, man. Do you know who you’re talking to? This guy survives on one bowl of noodles a _day_ \-- you couldn’t bribe him with roast duck.”

“That’s not just any bowl of _noodles_ , boys -- that’s a _special event_ token,” said Genma, salesman of the year. “That means it works for luxury tags like sake and cigarettes, too. Raidō bought a _dehumidifier_ with his. You can get a lot of money for one of these!”

Obito crossed his arms and issued another terrific snort. Kakashi sent the coin sliding back across the desk. 

“Your puffed rice is no good here, Genma." He warned. "Come back with real money -- the kind with faces on it, not Mission Control’s pity chips.”

“Man, you’re tough,” their classmate sighed. “So how much for the zone?”

“You said you wanted a half,” Kakashi reminded him. 

“Oh,” Genma chuckled nervously. “Getting ahead of myself. How much for a half?”

“Eighty.”

“Ah-ha, _what?_ Hatake -- how do you expect to stay in business? Drongo is selling them on the Loop for sixty!”

“ _Drongo_ is selling mancheese.”

Genma held his put-upon expression for almost a whole thirty seconds, and Kakashi matched him with the intent to take him down. What people sometimes forgot about him was he trained dogs. And Genma shared 90 percent of his genetic material with Kakashi’s dogs. His classmate didn’t collapse, but, he did look away and search his chest for a heartbeat, after. 

“I’m begging you, man,” he lied. “I promised Anko I’d take her to the Goose Fair this weekend -- last year we got caught hopping the gates and her old man had to bail us out. If I show up this weekend with no tickets and nothing to smoke she’ll think I’m a scrub.”

“You _are_ a scrub,” Obito iterated slowly. 

“It’s a half for eighty, or you can get your zone for one-fifty. Take your pick or get off my horizon.” Kakashi lifted his book and reopened it to a totally random page.

“Freezing, Hatake, really.” said Genma, a bit of his sour true self showing through. “Come on, help a homie out -- give me the coma guy discount.”

“Suck an egg, Shiranui -- " Obito’s chair cracked against the back wall. “I’ll put your mom back on _bed_ rest!”

“Well.” said the poison user, snake-eyed. “Nice to see you’ve got the old spark back.”

“Keep slithering around and I’ll show you the _new_ one,” he threatened, and Obito seemed to know better than to jab at their classmate, but he curled one glove into a fist and promised it to him with a glint in his eye. 

Before he could really get going, Kakashi interrupted them. “I gotta say, Genma, your pathetic story has moved me.” 

“Hang on,” he bent to dig in his bag. “I have something for you.”

“ _Yo_ -o,” he heard Genma cawing overhead. “Thanks for this, Kash. I owe you one, dude. It’s like they say, you know, business between friends -- it all comes out in the wash. There’s no need for ledgers and tallies -- err, what’s this?”

“A free sample,” Kakashi answered, taking him by the wrist to settle the pearly nug in his palm. “It’s my newest strain: Fire Fruit and Black Pampas parentage -- I’m calling it Purple Dragon.”

“But… that’s it?”

It was the most stunning nug in his grower’s last shipment, as a matter of fact. Shaped like a plump evergreen tree, Kakashi had selected it for its violet complexion, dense build, and frost-like dusting of fog green in its exuberant upper tiers. It was truly a nug among nugs. 

“Honestly, it’s all you can handle,” he said. “But if you still want that zone, I’ll give it to you for a hundred and twenty kools.”

He perked up visibly. “Seriously?”

“On one condition,” he continued, and waited to catch the wiry jōnin's tired eyes. “And I’ll know if you don’t do it.”

“Yeah, okay, what?”

“You have to use the extra dough to buy a fire lily for Anko.”

Genma squinted, scratched under his belt with one hand. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Ask Raidō to split with you -- tell him I gave you a deal for one-forty,” Kakashi advised. “You can pocket the rest.”

“Good idea,” Genma nodded, his grin lopsided by the needle. He started to turn away.

“Don’t come back if Bunzo-sensei is here,” Kakashi called after him. “I don’t trust that dot on his forehead.”

Their classmate skipped back down the steps to the front of the room, presumably to hound Raidō about the deal, and Obito stared after him, chin on folded arms on the desk, and Kakashi could tell the brief interaction had put him in a bad temper. 

“We’re s’posed to fight _next_ to that guy beyond the wall?” He said. “He doesn’t even have the decency to pay for his damn weed. He’d sell out his own mother for a free quarter. What a jackass.”

"Maa," Kakashi hummed. “Genma grew up in the lower ring, you know. Bartering is an art form down there.”

"Doesn't surprise me -- anybody who wears their forehead protector _backwards_ has to have enemies in low places." Obito looked away, then his eye darted back. “When did you get so understanding?”

He chuckled. “Ease up -- take him to market with you, and you won’t pay for anything. Dude is a fucking snake charmer.”

“Doesn’t he know fire lilies are like _fifty_ kools a stem?” He grumpled. Kakashi wanted to stretch him out on his bed, every which way. 

“They’re free if you climb to the top of Mount Philo on a full moon.”

Obito shook his head. “He’ll never do it. Genma doesn’t have a romantic bone in his entire body. Even if he buys the damn thing, Anko will probably think he’s under a body possession jutsu and clean his clock. I’d pay to watch that.”

“Then… “ Kakashi lowered _Walk the Plank_ again. “Wanna go to the Goose Fair this weekend?”

“Uhm,” Obito seemed to stumble, then cleared his throat. “Sure, man.”

Kakashi nodded, refocusing on his book. “Word.” 

There was some inconvenient fuzz sitting kind of low in his throat too, but he thought it would be an awkward to time to clear it out, so Kakashi swallowed instead, but that made it ten times fuzzier and he coughed abruptly onto the page he was looking at.

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel like most people have cars and bikes or creepy doll collections and my hobbies are big gay cartoon couples  
> what canya do


	7. school days pt. 2

[school days pt. 2](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/school-days-pt-2?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

Bunzo-sensei never entered a classroom, and he never left -- he was either there, or he wasn’t. 

Kakashi was still trying to soothe the tickle from his throat in a subtle and masculine way when he glanced over his book and spotted the infinitely tall and exquisitely bald instructor of elite jōnin at the front of the room, tidying things around his desk. His frown lines could shame a student sitting in the back row two classrooms away. 

Bunzo-sensei wore his usual armor of leather and cloth, and a gray jacket that fell to his knees. Kakashi squinted his eyes lazily and wondered what the Sharingan could tell him about their instructor, but he didn’t need the eye’s extraordinary gift of insight to tell that many of Bunzo’s friends were retired, or dead. He was probably skilled in haiku, had a few rocky relationships in his past -- at least one bitter ex -- and a cat at home that he’d long since grown comfortable talking to. But that was just Kakashi throwing his intuition around.

“Bunzo-sensei always looks so tight.” Obito mused. “What d’you think he wears to sleep -- like, eight-hundred belts?”

“Nothing but camel butter, probably,” Kakashi answered, flipping his page. 

“Ugh, dude,” his teammate straightened up and brushed at the table surface like he could sweep the conversation away. “Why’d you have to say that.”

“I thought it would gross you out.” 

“You’re both wrong,” said the jōnin in the row in front of them. Kakashi searched for a name and came up with something silly like _Kigo_. It was probably dead wrong, but most people were either too polite or too intimidated to correct the Copy Nin. 

“Bunzo-sensei doesn’t sleep. I heard -- ” Kigo leaned back in his chair and whispered conspiratorially. “He can’t even lay down, ‘cause of an old injury. So when he’s really tired, he stands against a wall, and closes his eyes.”

Obito giggled. “Imagine running into _that_ in a dark alley.”

“No, you’ve got it backwards,” said Kigo’s neighbor, a lean going on starved-looking jōnin with at least a dozen pieces of metal in his face. “His injury makes it so he can’t stand _up_. Bunzo-sensei is trapped in his house -- he sends an astral projection of his body to class. That’s why he looks exactly the same every day.”

Kakashi liked this theory; it would explain how their instructor stayed so perfectly bald.

“I don’t believe that.” Kigo huffed. 

“I heard -- ” his neighbor continued. “Bunzo-sensei’s mental state is so elevated, when he meditates, he levitates three feet off the ground!”

“Levitating’s not that hard,” Obito boasted. 

“Good evening, young Uchiha,” came the grave voice of their instructor, suddenly right next to them in the aisle at the back row. Obito’s chair fell back on four legs and he gripped the table edge comically. The pair in front of them spun around and began a loud and uninformed conversation about what was for dinner at the Academy cantine.

“Enjoying the tea?”

“It’s okay,” Obito lied.

Bunzo-sensei closed his eyes and nodded with the patience of a monk before his sapling pupil. “As nature is assaulted by the changing season, so is the body. It is necessary to defend yourself.”

“Uh huh.” Obito crossed his arms over his chest.

“I think it shall rain, this evening.”

He snorted. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

“Even so.” Bunzo tucked his hands into his sleeves. “I’d like to speak with you after the lecture, today, if possible.”

“Again? I would, sensei, but our landlord is coming by to -- to check the apartment for, um, spiders! We’ve got these, _huge_ crab-spiders -- ”

“Not anymore,” Kakashi interrupted his teammate’s floundering. “I got rid of them this morning, remember? With your bedroom door.”

“Oh yeah,” Obito deflated. Then, dryly: “Thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

Their instructor inclined his head very slightly and then resumed straightening things out at his desk, twenty-five feet away, in the length of time it took Kakashi to dodge a half-hearted swing from his teammate. Was it body flicker? Space-time jutsu? Astral projection? Maybe Bunzo-sensei simply moved like the wind.

Obito groaned and melted back down over the desk. 

Kakashi grinned under his mask. “Maa, Obito. It won’t be that bad. Maybe he’ll give you more stuff.”

“More ad _vice_ , you mean,” he murmured miserably. “As if I need anyone else’s crumby advice.”

“Give Bunzo a chance.”

“ _Agh_ ,” he groaned again. “Don’t say it like that, K. You know how I feel about the bastard.”

“I’ll wait outside the door with a stapler.” He promised.

“The thing I most don’t like about him, though,” Obito went on, narrowing his eyes on the front of the room. “Is all those rings. He’s got rings on every, effing, finger. Who needs that many rings?”

The lecture was a refresher course on renkei ninjutsu. Kakashi immediately relaxed. The two of them might not be the poster boys of cooperation, but their ninjutsu worked surprisingly well in combination. He knew the text on renkei backwards and forwards; all that was left was the practicum -- repetition and refinement. 

“If he turns on the projector, I’m finished,” his teammate grumpled. 

The lights flickered out, Bunzo-sensei turned on the projector, and Obito slumped over his folded arms. Within the minute he was snoring softly. 

By the end of the three-hour cram session, Kakashi had reached the startling conclusion of his book, drafted a letter to the author in his head, and cleared most of the tree debris off his teammate’s right side. Towards the end, it was creeping up on 1900 and the students were starting to shift; stomachs intermittently growled to each other across the room; and the skies were burning down the color of candlelight. In another half hour, the Academy cantine would close, and anyone hoping for a cheap meal would have to cough up or go hungry. 

Obito’s cloudy black eye emerged half-lidded just as Kakashi addressed the dirt behind his ear again. 

“Is it over?”

He hummed an affirmative, and allowed himself to be elbowed away as his roommate sat up and stretched his arms over his head. 

“Can I copy your notes later?” He yawned.

“Um,” Kakashi glanced at the only material he’d taken notes on in the last three hours. _Makeout: Walk the Plank._ “Sure.”

Obito sneezed a laugh. Kakashi held back as long as he could but they wound up shaking and snorting like a couple of idiots for a few seconds in the back row. The hush that had fallen over the drowsy jōnin shattered in the post-class rush as students transformed back into boisterous teenagers and vaulted over chairs, tables, and each other to get at the exits. In seconds, the rush dwindled to a trickle. 

“I’ll be outside,” Kakashi informed his teammate, collecting his things as the last of their classmates departed. 

“Huh?” Obito rubbed at his eye. 

“Give Bunzo a chance,” he reminded him, and slipped out the rear door into the familiar corridors.

They were in the Academy’s weapons wing; the walls were decorated floor to ceiling with reproductions of the tools of war. There were scrolls depicting the evolution of the halberd, snapshots of Konoha’s triple-bladed kunai -- even models of naginata on display behind long glass cases. The naginata were ancient polearms wielded by the nobushi: legendary female nin of Konoha’s past. Kakashi liked that the Land of Fire had been in part settled by roving bands of female ronin; the Hatake clan was fiercely matriarchal, although its long history and relative prosperity had since weakened its ties to tradition. He still remembered his father had to get special permission from the female head of his house in order to raise Kakashi alone in the city after his mother died. 

He hadn’t visited his clan -- physically, or in memory -- for many years, but he was still hardwired to admire women. His clansmen would probably shed tears over his bookshelf, though. In the end, he supposed, they were too far apart. He was a shinobi. The Hatakes were a community of farmers. They toiled and died in the dirt they were born in, raising geese and sugarcane. Elders lived together in large compounds with their children and their children’s children and children’s children’s children. Their lives were long, predictable cycles, worn into the land like footprints. Kakashi didn’t belong there. He was the misguided son of White Fang. 

He reached back and almost pulled his tantō from its sheath on his back, but decided to get a grip on himself instead. He blamed the inclement weather, for getting so emotional. Konoha’s seasonal rains were famous for breaking open floodgates. Lately Kakashi felt the blue bulk of his memories flush against the front of his skull; he was chuck full of holes and scrambling to plug up the leaks, slipping in bits of his soul on the ground and thinking _'When did_ that _get there?'_ and _'Am I_ losing _it?'_

He always thought of himself and his dad as the only two members of their own personal clan. At the time, he was too young to take back the shit he said -- and Kakashi was older now but still too ashamed to own up to the past. Sakumo was gone. It was all up to him to pass the Hatake groove on. What could he even do, to begin to match up to White Fang?

He was a fucking dog. Friend-killer. Kakashi had devoured his father’s reputation. 

“Now what would the Copy Nin be doing -- ” came a sudden wheedling voice. “Leashed up outside a classroom?”

Kakashi snapped to. Genma appeared next to him, eyeing the naginata display appreciatively.

“Bunzo having another chat with boo?”

He grunted.

“Could be worse.” His classmate continued, swaying in Kakashi’s peripheral as he shifted his weight. “He invited me to a game of chess once in the park. He said we’d play for stakes. I put up my new shoes and he put up a sack of gold. A whole sack -- like it was laundry lint, dude.”

Kakashi didn’t believe him. 

“It was a _ten hour_ match,” said Genma. “Half the oldies in the park were watching us, in the end. I'd sweat through my damn shirt -- never played chess so hard in my life. And the whole time Bunzo-sensei was telling me a buttload of military crap about effective re _prisals_ , the proportionality of will and reward, and the art of disguising ill intentions -- I would’ve thrown the game for a _breather_ \-- ”

“So you lost?” He guessed.

“I went home barefoot, again.” He shrugged. “But I wouldn’t say I lost -- he paid for my lunch.”

Kakashi snorted. 

“You know,” hummed the wiry jōnin. “You’re not very easy to amuse.” 

“Good observation.” One-hundred percent not in the mood, was more like it. 

“I heard -- ” he said lowly. “You copied _hun_ dreds of jutsus in ANBU. If you hadn’t stepped down, what d’you think it would be today? A thousand? More?”

He ducked away when Kakashi swung around, voice echoing lightly down the deserted halls. “Sword shopping out here, Kash? Obito-kun seems like more of a _fists_ guy, if you ask me. Although -- who knows? Maybe he bites, too.”

“What do you want, Genma?”

Genma rolled his eyes and tucked his hands into his pockets a safe distance away. A smile twitched at one side of his mouth. “No need to sound so mean, Hatake -- I only wanted to ask you guys to dinner. Me, Raidō, and Ebisu are going to the Waving Cat. Guy is taking some kind of overachiever night class for extra training points, so he’s not coming. _Dragon dancing_ , I think. Something mad lame.”

“Oh,” Kakashi indulged in a long silent breath but it didn’t settle his inner juices as much as it usually did. “I don’t know. We might catch up with you.”

“You know,” the poison user hummed doubtfully, rocking on his toes. “I saw a crow land on a broken branch today.”

“So?”

Genma smiled his twisted smile. “Don’t they say that’s three years bad luck, in the farming community?”

Normally Kakashi didn’t particularly mind the other’s sense of humor, but it was definitely rubbing him the wrong way that evening. “Aren’t you late for something?”

“Alright already. Don’t snap your leash.” His classmate said, chuckling, and started back down the corridor. He lifted a hand over his shoulder in casual salute. “I’ll come through later -- you can tell me more about that purple dragon.”

The nice thing about a conversation with a petty little purp like Genma was you walked away embittered about nonsense. And all the Real Bad Stuff you were thinking about before gets pushed back down to deeper waters, to rise and reckon another day. 

The two chakra presences inside the classroom dwindled to one, and Kakashi pushed open the rear door. 

“B -- ?”

The skies were simmering down to embers and his teammate cut a small silhouette in front of the vast lecture hall windows. Sunset was a weak and dying thing and Kakashi noticed that a strange, cloudless rain was falling. Needle-like gray shadows lanced across the desks.

Obito had shed his jacket; it must’ve been bothering him all day. Kakashi felt the change like a sly little knife between the ribs, though, because he always thought Obito looked best this time of day. Dark hair, dying sun, bare shoulders -- moody as the damn backdrop. 

“Yo, Genma and Raidō are going to the Waving Cat -- ” he started, rounding the last table on his trot across the room. He stopped short of Obito’s side. “Uh, what’s wrong?”

His terrible black eye was looking like weak tea -- heavy-lidded, lukewarm, lackluster pink around the edges. A rippled ring of salt had dried in the scarred skin around it, as if he’d scrubbed his tears dry. 

“Dude,” Kakashi cooed, struck dumb and unable to draw up an image of what comfort looked like. “Was it that bad?”

Rain tapped at the glass, gathered into groups and tumbled down the windows in winding rivulets. Obito leaned back on the table behind him and shook his head -- curled his lip. Kakashi smiled, because only his teammate could act so tough with his cryface on.

“Did he make you cry?” Kakashi wondered, bracing himself over his palms and sliding up onto the desk he leaned against. All his roommate’s stuff -- everything he left the apartment with that morning -- was packed up on the table surface behind him, like he’d got all ready to leave and then just decided to have a moment with the rain. Kakashi didn’t ever allow himself to have moments; he needed to get a grip, represent for his dad, live up to his own reputation -- be the Copy Nin, cold-hearted K, and shit. But Obito was the kind of person who had his moments in the present, when they came to him, and Kakashi admired that.

At last, his roommate spoke. In a small, ambling tone. “He said, I’ve got potential.”

“Damn -- " he cursed. "I was hoping for a reason to have a go at him.”

The sound of rainfall picked up to a canter and the smell of wet grass and leaf filled the classroom. Kakashi tasted the weight of the humidity on his tongue, filtered through his mask, and gauged the temperature outside.

“I gotta tell ya something,” Obito said suddenly. “About when I was asleep.”

He realized he’d sat up by his teammate’s blind side and he should _know_ better than that, by now, but decided it was better not to make any sudden moves. There used to be a time when Kakashi considered himself a moves guy, but with Obito he seemed to make all the wrong ones.

“I wasn’t… conscious,” he continued. “But it wasn’t like being unconscious, either. I remember all these -- dreams, I guess. Of things that happened while I was out. That thing you were talking about on the bus? That shit about Leftover Milk? I re _member_ that, dude -- I remember those tunnels full of bodies, I remember that darkness.”

Kakashi felt his brow furrow. “But how -- ?”

“Mostly I remember myself,” Obito wearied on, staring at the weeping windows. “With, like, six-hundred tubes sticking out of my chest.”

“I mean -- maybe like, six.” 

Obito's eye widened. “What!” 

“You had a lot of tubes, for a while,” Kakashi admitted. “Your lung collapsed, and most of your bones were toast on one side. Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

Obito crossed his arms and shrugged. “I thought you’d feel weird about it. I was trapped in a freaky dream theater -- and I guess I was watching your life through my eye, bro. It’s weird. Well -- not your _whole_ life, just, you know, the intense parts.”

He paused. Then: “I can remember Rin. In the end.”

Kakashi felt his sadness heaping up around him. Abruptly Obito jolted. He heard a loud sniff, and froze head-to-toes as his friend began to cry. 

“Agh,” Obito hissed, driving the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Fucker!”

The few times he’d seen him cry, Kakashi did stupid things. One time it happened when they were fighting in the apartment; Obito dropped to the floor and put his palms over his eyes and shook -- and Kakashi had body flickered the fuck _outta_ there. He was ashamed halfway through the hand signs but he did it again and again anyway. Like just the other day he found him crying under his windowsill next to that stupid pot of dirt, and Kakashi had run away again -- and felt like dirt about it. 

His teammate jolted with another choked sob and tore off the red patch covering his left eye. The tear duct on his blind side was still very much functional. 

“Sorry,” he apologized, but the way he said it sounded like a swear-word. 

“You can cry,” Kakashi hummed, and it was strange to hear himself give up the permission he so rarely extended to himself. 

“It’s stupid.”

He reached out fifty times and didn’t touch him. “The day you woke up,” he began, slowly. “I told the base commander I wasn’t taking any missions, called in sick to cram -- then I went home, and I _wept_."

His roommate sniffed, hiccupped, and his hands shifted from his eyes.

“No.” He said, with a watery intensity. 

“Dead ass,” Kakashi insisted. “Not pretty crying, either. A gusher. Like Might Guy in a rant about youth and vitality.”

Obito yielded to a small half-smile and chuckled weakly. He shook his head like he didn’t believe him.

“And then I started thinking about youth, and vitality,” Kakashi continued. “And I thought he’s _right_ , you know -- it _is_ a miracle and a blessing -- and that made me cry more.”

When his arms fell back to his sides Kakashi acted. Slower than tai-chi he extended one arm across Obito’s collar bones, then curled it around the back of his neck and drew his side into his chest. He’d needed a damn hug for probably weeks, now, but Kakashi had been banking on the illusion that his roommate would self-sort it out. But he couldn’t watch, for the second time, as someone he loved succumbed to sadness. 

The thought of it moved him more than raw nerve ever had and from their awkward standing-sitting positions Kakashi tightened his hold and knocked his forehead to his temple, trying to let his love bleed over, and he said something dumb and unhelpful like _it’s okay_.

Eventually his teammate relaxed. He turned into him, and Kakashi felt the bridge of his nose bump against his cheek. Right about now, he thought, was usually when he said something stupid and ruined everything.

“Kakashi?” Obito murmured after a moment. “You’re not breathing.”

He didn’t respond.

“K?” He tried again. “What’re you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

He felt his teammate’s fucking breath on his mouth and he wanted to wriggle out of his mask, wanted to just tilt his head a bit, or say something totally devastating, but he was froze. He’d made it this far and froze. In the corner of his eye he saw Obito’s gaze darting around his face; it narrowed on his scarred eye and then fell lower. 

If he was imagining things again it was getting more and more satisfying because Kakashi could’ve sworn he felt his teammate’s mouth settle just a little beneath his. His heartbeat ratcheted up and he waited the length of time during which it was still acceptable for his roommate to jump away and claim it never happened -- but he didn’t jump, the window of time closed, and finally Kakashi tipped his head to respond with a much more decisive pressure of his own. 

And that was when Obito pulled away. 

Kakashi bit down on his disappointment, feeling like he’d got psyched up for the big dive only to find the water ankle-deep -- and he let his arm fall. He went almost dizzy with loss and barely registered it when his roommate circled around to put his back to the windows, and face him straight on. He felt a warm touch to the side of his neck, and used it as leverage to work his chin free from his mask. 

Obito stared. The air stirred against Kakashi’s skin. He didn’t have any issues tracking the direction of the other’s gaze, this time, and he tried not to look too victorious but Obito’s tear-stained glove was on his mask on his neck, and his eye was on his mouth when he leaned in close, just to hover there -- but Kakashi was having none of that butterfly bullshit. He captured the bow of his teammate’s lower lip between his teeth in a quick nip, then forced their mouths together in a way that left Obito no other option than to say that they had kissed. 

Once. Twice. Or a whole bunch of times, Kakashi thought, lifting one hand and slipping it behind his neck. He gripped tight enough to lead him in closer, then tried to distract his roommate with a change of angle while he worked his fingers into the short hair at the back of his head. 

“Hey don’t -- ” Obito started to push on him. “Pull -- hair!”

Kakashi held his grip firm and used the advantage of his open mouth to slot his own against it, humming something unintelligible in response. 

“K -- ” He struggled, curled his hand into the material of his mask and used it to shove him back. “ _Wait_.”

“My bad,” Kakashi huffed, trying not to pant, and retreated to breathing distance. “Too fast?”

His teammate loosened his hand, flushed brilliant red. “No, just -- how long have you, wanted to, jump me?”

He rolled his eyes and nosed up against his friend again, flicked the tip of his tongue at the corner of his mouth. “A while.”

“What -- since when!”

“Hm,” He grazed his lips over Obito’s scarred cheek. “The Academy, maybe.”

“What!” He yelped again. “But… all you did was chuck spitballs at the back of my head!”

Only because he was such an adorable tryhard, Kakashi thought fondly, how could he _not?_

“Exactly,” he said instead. “Why would I put all that _ef_ fort into it?”

He didn’t laugh, or argue, or snort like he expected; Obito went very quiet. His eye fell, and then picked up where it left off, searching him. Kakashi leaned back.

“Um,” Obito started. “I’m glad I got crushed under that rock.”

Kakashi felt his eyebrows rise. “B -- “

“For real,” he insisted. “If it hadn’t happened, I, uh -- I don’t think we ever coulda been this close. And I don’t mean, necking, like just now -- I mean even as friends. I was, so -- blinded, by Rin. I loved her. She never had to prove anything to me; I saw it all, right there. I knew she was different from the others. But, I also knew she never liked me the same.

“I had you stereotyped as the perfect soldier.” He continued, his eye low. “Didn’t even think about why you pissed me off so much. I didn’t like your crazy talent, or your fucking attitude, that’s for sure. But mostly, I guess, I wanted to see you care. About anything.”

Kakashi exhaled slowly through his nose. His heartbeat needed to slow the fuck down. He felt kind of cut up but not like he didn’t deserve it.

“I don’t want to think about what could have been, anymore.” Obito shook his head like there was an extra voice in there. “And I don’t care how it all turned out so bad, in the end. It was almost worse. It could’ve been so much worse. And we’re -- better, now. Better shinobi. Better people, maybe.”

Kakashi was reminded of the emotional tiredness he’d felt, one ordeal after another -- and the very worst outcome had not been the friends he lost but the one he’d never even made and might not have a chance to. There had been days where putting one foot in front of the other took monumental force of will. He’d fought without heart, meditated without spirit. He’d stared at that damn rock and wanted to add his name to it. 

Kakashi reached out with both arms and drew his living, breathing, stinky teammate back into his embrace. 

“I missed you, B,” he admitted, finally. “Every day while you were asleep.”

Obito snorted. “I know, Bakashi. I can’t believe you sat with me and all my gross _tubes_ for three years. That must’ve sucked.”

“It did,” Kakashi chuckled, and suddenly he felt like crying, too. “It really, really did.”

  


“Um,” Obito moved closer, till he was between his knees and Kakashi didn’t think anything of it until it became all he could think of. “Can I try kissing you, again?”

He nodded, dropped one arm to his lap and adjusted the other around his neck. “Open your mouth this time,” he advised. “And take off those fucking gloves.”

Obito ignored him, leaned in and closed his lips tentatively under the left corner of his mouth. It was so sweet Kakashi short of sighed over it; it made him wonder for a second if maybe his teammate was in love with him, or at least on his way there -- and then he tipped his head and their lips connected and Kakashi’s thoughts drowned away in the warmth it brought. His eyelids flickered, and hands closed over his sides -- purposeful, this time, and burning hot. The temperature caught him off guard and he uttered a small grunt of surprise. Obito swallowed the noise and pressed inward with renewed force. Kakashi was just about to settle in and enjoy the best moment of his life when, by chance, he scanned the room, and sensed a chakra signature out of place. 

“ _Genma!_ ” He hissed, whipping his head around. 

“Ah-ha,” coughed the voice of their classmate. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. I forgot my -- Demon -- Wind -- ”

He stumbled into a chair and it rattled over the floor. “Shuriken.”

Obito wiped his mouth on his forearm, glaring across the room. Kakashi maintained himself as a sort of shield between the poison user and his teammate, but he knew it probably wasn’t any big mystery, who’d got between his legs. 

The wiry jōnin finished his lame excuse and continued in the same halting, laughing tone. “Is that a _no_ to dinner, then?”

“He asked you to dinner?” Obito murmured, peering at Kakashi as if he’d had their classmate on the back burner this whole time, and he hurried to deny it. 

“No -- ”

Across the room, Genma was nodding. “I sure did.”

Obito’s eye narrowed.

“He asked us _both_ to dinner.” 

“Like a package deal,” added the poison user.

Kakashi turned to scowl at him. “Are you done here?”

“Just about.” Genma produced a large ring of folded blades from inside one of the desks.

“I’ll see you guys later,” he said, leaning the blunt edge of the weapon over his shoulder and loitering back the way he’d come, whistling a lilting tune. 

After a moment, Obito broke the quiet. “That guy is always showing up where you _don’t_ want him to be.”

“He’ll make great security one day,” Kakashi mused.

“Or, like, counter-intelligence,” Obito grumbled. “Can’t get a _sec_ ond of privacy in the damn ninja world.”

It had been more like ten minutes, Kakashi thought, but he wasn’t going to challenge it. “At least it was Genma. No one will believe him.”

“I don’t care about that.” Obito sniffed. “And what did he mean, see us later?”

“He’s coming by the apartment.” Kakashi remembered. “For the zone.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” he groaned, a tad overdramatic. “I hate the way he calls you _Kash_. It’s so stupid.”

Kakashi thought the two might be decent friends, if Obito weren’t so determined to be gloomy. 

Their classmate’s distraction helped anchor him, and he felt himself sinking gradually down from the emotional fervor of the past ten minutes. He glanced down at their positions and tapped his knees against his teammate’s hips. Obito’s nostrils flared, and Kakashi let his teeth show. 

“You wanna get out of here?” He suggested. “Or wait for a more reliable witness?”

Obito’s eye flicked up and down, as if he wasn’t impressed with every inch. “A witness to what?”

Kakashi thought for a moment, then started to reach for his book. “I could show you a few examples -- ”

“Ugh, dude,” his nose wrinkled. “Not the tentacle one -- _gods_. Why’d you have to say that?”

“Too fast?”


	8. interlude: killing hands pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> interlude!  
> two-parter!

Night fell darkly through the cracks of the housing projects. 

By the time Genma and his goons left, it was pouring out. Thick gales of wind and water crashed against the foundations of the apartment complex, rattling windows in their cedar lathes. Bells and hanging charms cried out intermittently as they _clack_ ed against door frames. In his room, Obito could still hear faint singing from the park -- it always sounded so ghostly, on stormy nights. 

The rains followed the city’s natural and manmade spillways, travelling beneath the roads from the upper to the lower ring, ultimately to drain into Green Lake. The morning after a storm, municipal workers always arrived early on the boardwalk to hose away trash and food waste left behind by the deluge.

Kakashi thought the gatekeeper had it bad, but everybody knew city clean-up crews had it worse. 

The apartment complex where they lived was midway up a hilly side-street popularly known as _piss alley_ , because it branched off of a very popular nightclub and bar district; those who couldn’t afford cab fare tended to stumble along the alley back home. At the top of the block sat a squat old concrete building with a door and a window and just one room; it was a dump-house -- and it took the very worst the city had to offer. Every day a woman wearing a mask, plastic bags over her shoes, and carrying an iron rake would enter the little dump-house, and bit by bit she would scrape out all the trash, hose the piss and grime off the stained walls, and ride away with all of it piled up in a rusty wagon hooked to the back of her bicycle. By the afternoon lunch rush of the same day, that concrete crap-trap at the top of the block would be filled up again with bulging trash bags and hella waste from the local coffee stop, fishery, and fruit markets. Passing civilians tossed their takeaway and personal garbage at the window until it was leaking out the door. The smell was so putrid, even the stray cats knew better than to drink the brackish water that ran down the street. On rainy nights like this one, that hideous water could sink you to the ankles. 

It was funny how, even at relative peace, the city seemed to war with itself. What right had any society to expand, if it hasn’t learned yet how to live? 

The dump-house at the top of piss alley made Obito question the nature of true peace. 

Obito wasn’t antisocial -- or, he didn’t _used_ to be -- but after two hours of storytelling, gossip and entertainment with some of Konoha’s most elite bud-heads, on top of three hours of _cards_ the other night with Ebisu and Guy -- Obito didn’t know how much more of Kakashi’s aggressive social life rehabilitation program he could take. He knew his roommate probably thought he was looking out for him, but he was tired of people getting the wrong impression about him, just because of the coma thing. They treated him like he was naive -- a child, or an outsider not quite caught up with the times. But to tell the truth, Obito felt older than his comrades. 

And some days, he preferred solitude to being lonely in a crowd. 

About an hour into their classmates’ social call, Obito shuffled off to piss, and very subtly never returned. Instead he chose to slip into his room, start on his push-ups, and stretch out some of the kinks in his tighter muscle groups. He was so knotted up and sore from the black courts, he knew he wouldn’t be able to walk straight tomorrow, not without an hour in a steam room -- or a thorough round of acupuncture, maybe. It was always difficult to get started in the morning with bodywide muscle aches, and the pain in his right side left him wadded up taut and tense like a tangled ball of rubber bands. He knew taking a rest day would only make it even harder and more painful later, though.

In his room, Obito tuned into the sounds of corny park music under the heavy rain, and looked at his dirt for a little bit. Then he laid on his belly and flipped through one of the comic books he’d taken from Kakashi’s shelf.

In the end, the designation ‘porn guy’ was just as smallening and mean as scar- or coma guy was to Obito; although not without its grain of truth, his teammate was equal parts closet pervert and devoted reader. 

Obito had never been good at reading. When he was very young in the Uchiha compound he’d received lessons in art, culture, and history that bored the life out of him; he never had the attention span to decipher all those old scrolls and squiggly writing, so he spent much of his time staring out windows instead -- and getting his knuckles rapped for it. 

But comics were different; the language wasn’t so archaic and confusing, and the pictures helped him follow the stories. Once he discovered they weren’t all about tit and cock and bizarre body positioning, Obito started regularly plundering his roommate’s bookshelf for entertaining stories -- and suddenly reading wasn’t such a chore anymore. 

And maybe he did peek at those other ones, just out of curiosity. But he found the rose-tinted descriptions boring and the people inside them false, and -- more importantly -- he didn’t find anything in them that might be useful for learning how to be with another dude. 

When the howling and laughter faded from the narrow halls of their cramped living space, Obito decided it was safe to venture back into the open. But, on his way out, he remembered the crab-spider.

The corpse was where he left it, directly on the threshold between the hallway and his personal space. In the fashion Kakashi killed the spider -- a quick slam of the door as it tried to scuttle out -- the body had stuck, glued to the doorframe at eye-level, all of its legs frozen in identical petrified curls. He’d been killing them one by one and now Obito walked past a crucified critter every day. Sometimes he forgot all about them until he walked too close and one of the legs caressed his ear on the way out the door. All he had to do to make them go away was clean up the bodies, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

The worst thing was, crab-spiders were totally harmless. They didn’t bite, they didn’t poison, or make gigantic disgusting nests. They were perfect house-guests -- they even ate all the _other_ , less desirable guests -- if only they weren’t so, damned, scary. 

The climate in the capital was just warm enough for some interchange of wildlife with southern regions of the country, and that included subtropical species of bug and insect, which tended to be much larger than their northern cousins. The crab-spider was the size of Obito’s whole hand and when it moved it moved swiftly, silently, and _side_ ways like a _freak_ across his bedroom walls. Big, brown, and hairy -- it was the kind of thing you hoped wasn’t watching you sleep at night. For days Obito exhausted himself working or training, and then he dragged himself home just to lay awake all night watching his new roommates scuttle around touching all of his stuff. 

He made the mistake of complaining about this situation at last week’s cram seminar, which was invitation for fucking _Gen_ ma to tell him all this very disturbing shit about how spiders crawl into your orifices at night, and put spider sex hormones on you to attract spider mates -- he said spiders eat the dead skin off your lips; spiders lay tiny eggs in your pores that hatch into thousands of tiny spider babies; spiders will snatch your ninja stars and your ninja bike and _pawn_ them. 

Obito started to think all sorts of bad things about his eight-legged guests. They didn’t communicate, so all the suspicion and fear and mistrust just sort of built up until there was this gigantic pressure between them. Then Kakashi slammed one in a door. At first he was relieved but the spider looked so much smaller when it was curled up dead, and Obito realized that all the bad juju built up between them was his own mind at work, constructing meaning inside a meaningless reality even if it meant fabricating an enemy, taking it down, and calling it justice. Now every time he passed the corpse stuck on his door frame, the cold-blooded murder haunted him. 

Obito thought of Kakashi’s killing hand on the back of his neck, and closing his own hands on his teammate’s surprisingly narrow sides, and it still got him hot -- but the metamorphosis going on with the crab-spider memory was going to take some working through.

Kakashi was right, he thought. _I really am a bag of nuts._

Obito kicked his bare feet halfway into his sandals and padded into the narrow hallway, proceeding to the kitchen to set the electric kettle.

The hallway formed the backbone of their apartment layout. At its western extreme lay the front door, and at the east end was a small screened porch facing Green Lake Park. Obito could cross from the door to the porch in 13 steps. Six if he was in a rush. The length of the entire pad wasn’t even large enough to get through a basic taijutsu form, let alone any of the flying katas.

The hall divided the common area in two: on one side was a rather irregular room under a low, slanted ceiling; on the other side was the kitchen, which was more of a nook with a sink and a fridge than a room unto itself. The irregular side became their cramped living room with the additions of the inhumane couch, a heavy table of solid oak, and some small wooden sitting stools. Cedarwood rafters scattered light from a narrow line of windows set into the wall just under the slanting ceiling; Kakashi had to bend a little to miss them before sitting down. 

In the kitchen Obito found the water had recently been boiled, so he looked around for a clean mug and tapped into his buckwheat supply. While he prepared his tea he searched out his roommate and found him in the corner of his eye -- across the hall, in the center of the couch. On the low table in front of him were three empty glasses, his rolling tray, a kitchen scale, and a gallon bag of hash stuffed like a yellow-green balloon. Usually Kakashi cleaned up after his social visits -- especially the drug-dealing ones -- and it looked like maybe he was trying, but not making any headway. 

“You should try to hang out more.” Obito heard him say, hunched over like he was chastising the table. 

_Whatever_ , he thought. Just because he didn’t want to spend his evening smoking his way through ten yards of rice paper with a couple of jokers like Genma and _Rai_ dō didn’t mean he was some kind of _hermit_.

“I just want you to be on good terms with them. In case something happens.”

Something happens -- Obito repeated in his head -- to what? To who?

“Like what?”

To him, he realized, a second later. Kakashi wanted him to have friends in case he bought the farm on their next foray beyond the wall. Fear travelled from his nuts to his stomach and settled on the back of his tongue. Obito gathered his tea into his hands, trembling with hatred at the idea. He didn’t say anything more because whenever he felt strongly about something and Kakashi didn’t, it started a fight. 

“Like -- ” his roommate hummed the way he did when he was drawing up bullshit, or pointing out something obvious. The problem was Obito couldn’t tell which it was. “If I were ever going to initiate a ku and overthrow the government -- or, say, gut it from the inside out -- they would be exactly the team I’d do it with.”

Obito thought about it and snorted, circling the table to get at his spot. He toed out of his sandals and sat facing his roommate, leaning his left side into the back of the couch and crossing his legs loosely in front of him. He took a sip of his tea, burnt the shit out of tongue, and lowered the mug to scowl at it. What kind of a team would _that_ be, anyway? Genma and Raidō, Anko and that girl from Team Three… “Even _Drongo?_ I didn’t even know that guy left his stoop on 116th until today. And who wears shorts in this weather?”

“You’re wearing shorts in this weather, Obito,” he said without looking up. 

Obito blushed. He of course had good, solid, medical _reas_ oning to despise clothing -- but there was no hiding the hypocrisy, or his hairy shins.

Suddenly Kakashi sighed, leaned away from the table and threw himself into the backboard of their horrible rigid couch. He rubbed at his eyes and sank down until his long legs almost folded on the floor. “I’m a bit too high for this.”

“Clean tomorrow,” Obito suggested. He didn’t mean so much venom to leak into it, but he was still thinking about his fresh new inability to make friends and getting frustrated when no pleasing image of the future came to mind without Kakashi in it. He needed homies _pron_ to.

Obito lifted his mug to his lips and took another sip. Hot stuff didn’t hurt so much if you were already burned.

Kakashi reached out while he was preoccupied and plucked something from his shirt: a twig fragment Obito hadn’t managed to dislodge with his cursory dust-off. His roommate flicked the twig at his face and laughed at his inability to dodge with two hands full of hot tea. 

_Fucker_ , he thought, hissing when steamy liquid slopped over his fingers. He’d taken off his gloves an hour ago and his hands weren’t spitting flames but they’d gone sort of numb.

“You didn’t shower,” Kakashi accused lightly. 

“I hate showering!” He slipped, wiping one hand on his shirt. 

“Oh?” His eyebrows rose, thick chipped silver. “Why?”

Obito felt his nostrils flare as he got uncomfortable with his inability to explain. “It makes my scars feel weird.”

“Oh,” Kakashi said again. Then, slowly: “Any way I could help?”

While he spoke he touched the backs of his knuckles to Obito’s scarred shin and traced them up to his knee. His teammate had a funny way of _asking_ if he could help but _look_ ing at him like he wanted to grab his ankles again.

Obito felt the hair on his legs prickle. 

“Actually -- there is something you can help me with.” He stood and gathered one hand in the back of his shirt, then paused to steady himself with a deep breath. Kakashi shuffled around and propped his toes against the edge of the table like his evening was about to pick up. Obito rolled his eyes at the sudden attention before peeling off his shirt and turning around. “It’s this stuff on my back.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath, the sound of his teammate’s mood plummeting. 

“Obito,” he said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

His blood boiled with something between rage and embarrassment and he started to wind his shirt back around his elbows. “You don’t have to help if you’re going to get angry about it.”

“No, I’m not -- ” Kakashi leapt off the couch and snatched him by the wrist. He wrestled his stinky training shirt from him and let it fall to the floor. “I’m not angry. Just -- ”

He sounded angry. “You sat around cram for three _hours_ with this fucking gash on your back?”

“It’s not that bad -- ”

“It’s so covered in _pine_ pitch and _for_ est gunk I couldn’t even smell it,” Kakashi rampaged. He dropped Obito’s wrist and sent one of the stools sliding across the wood floor with a kick. “Sit down.” Then he sent another one flying for no reason at all. “Here I was hoping for a strip show.” He stalked into the kitchen. 

Kakashi had legs for days. The slender youth from Obito’s childhood had metamorphosed into this stalky scarecrow teenager, and it was a pleasure to watch, honestly.

As usual his roommate picked an excellent time to be an ass, but Obito fell to the stool obediently anyway, because he really _had_ sat around cram for _three_ effin’ hours with a hot stripe of bark burn across the middle of his back. It was just a flesh wound, minor shinobi shit -- but what really bit ass was all the resin stuck into the shredded skin like nasty brown glue. Already he could feel it beginning to ooze again where his shirt ripped away the surface crust. He was probably going to be oozing and scabby for weeks; he really didn’t need an argument to go with it. Granted, training shirtless on the black courts and getting his ass whipped all the way back down to the blue zone had not been one of Obito’s shining moments. All he could do now, he supposed, was accept his punishment with dignity. 

Kakashi came back with an armload of supplies and an attitude still on his heels. He dropped their iron wok on the floor, a rag, and the last of a bottle of cooking oil that had come with the apartment. Obito leaned his elbows over his knees and watched him return to the kitchen and pull the electric kettle off its pad. It seemed like an elaborate torture scene beginning to unfold. 

“This is going to suck,” his teammate informed him, flicking Obito hard above the ear as he passed. Fucker.

Kakashi hooked a free stool with his foot and dragged it around, falling to a seat behind him all in one movement. Obito heard water cascade into the wok. 

The first brush of the rag, warm going on hot against his skin, felt like the grind of steel wool on his raw flesh and Obito bit down on his burned tongue when he felt a gooey glob of pine pitch come away along with some peach hairs on his back. 

“If you treat yourself like shit, people are gonna think you’re shit.” The Copy Nin informed him.

“Kiss my ass.”

Kakashi _tsk_ ed. “I don’t get it -- how do you lose this bad to a _tree?_ ”

Obito winced as more gravelly debris was dragged out of his wound. “Not sure,” he answered, too miserable to defend himself. “I fell. I think I blacked out on the zip.”

“But -- there’s a _sa_ fety line,” His voice actually cracked. The rag splashed into the wok. “It takes two seconds to clip to your belt -- are you telling me you just g _rab_ bed the fucking handle?”

“I told you, I blacked out.” Obito growled. “It was an accident. _No_ body uses the lines, they’re for amateurs. I’m elite -- ”

“No, you’re an idiot.” He corrected, wringing out the rag and bringing it back to task still steaming. “You don’t know your limits; if you’re too tired to take the zip, then _don’t_ take the fucking zip. That’s exactly the kind of move that will get your ass grilled on a mission. Your assessment scores are shit because you waste all your energy throwing flashy techniques instead of playing to your strengths. Being a shinobi isn’t a fucking _dance_ contest -- it’s a test of survival and you _suck_ at it!”

Obito curled his shoulders, leaning deeper over his knees, and tried not to think about all the others who had failed the test of survival. “Guess so,” he murmured.

“Why d’you do this shit? Why’re you so obsessed with getting ahead?”

“Not getting ahead -- tryin’ to catch _up_.”

A minute passed of silent conversation between Obito’s bark burn and the rough texture of the rag. Then the cloth splashed back into the wok and he felt a gust of air between his shoulder blades. One arm circled his middle until Kakashi’s wrist came to rest over his opposite hip.

“Idiot,” he sighed. 

Bracketed by his teammate’s knees, Obito rested his palms over his eyes and for a few breaths felt totally surrounded. Then Kakashi withdrew, wrung out the rag, and resumed pulling the blood, sap, and waxy tree residue away from his skin.

Eventually he cut the heavy silence with another, sharper sigh. “Okay, look. Don’t get me wrong -- I think you’re a savage. You get in the ring and it _scares_ people. They think they’re going to lose an arm, or something.”

Obito snorted.

“I’m serious,” he said. “There’s a power behind your emotions that’s wild, man. I’m jealous. I mean, you don’t get a heck of a lot _done_ out there, but you do cause a pretty awe-inspiring amount of destruction.”

Suddenly Obito felt his roommate reach up and scratch his blunt nails through the hair behind his ear, like he was a dog, or something. He shook him off. “I made three-hundred kools last month just betting on property damage in your matches.”

“That’s it?” He grumbled, thinking if Kakashi was going to lie to him, he should come up with a number a little more dazzling than three _ryo_. That was less than one-third of their rent. 

“Well, usually it’s more, but I didn’t expect you to lose your mind in that match against Yahagi. My baseline bet is always fifty k on twenty minutes, ten trees -- ”

“Ten _trees?_ What is that supposed to mean?” Obito interrupted, baffled. Bunzo only arranged their fights in forests half the time, and his match with Yahagi had been at the underground lake. He remembered, because at the end of their battle, there had been no more lake.

“A tree is a value measurement -- it means 10 _ryo_ in expenses to the city.” Kakashi explained. The rag skimmed the width of Obito’s back with no apparent aim. “Your average is ten and a half trees per match. Most people average three or four. But your fight with Yahagi only lasted fourteen minutes -- and you had to go and break a hole in the underground water shelf.”

“I got sick of all those fuckin’ _water_ -style jutsu!” Obito said. “Yahagi is so annoying -- I just wanted to make her go away.”

“We weren’t sure how to calculate how much it would cost to repair the bedrock,” Kakashi continued, mild. “Or if any water veins need to be redirected to fill the caverns again, so -- we gave the pot to the highest bidder. Genma took home a ton of loot -- that’s why he took us out for catfish that day. Didn’t you think that was weird?”

Obito hunkered down further over his knees. The story about the betting ring didn’t make him feel any better, really -- he especially didn’t like the idea of Genma making money off the matches and then lubing him up with delicious grilled catfish like Obito was some in _vest_ ment that needed hedging -- but he had to admit the backhanded flattery was kind of nice. He didn’t know if _savage_ was really a compliment but the way Kakashi said it made it sound like one.

“I’m sure he rigged the match somehow,” the Copy Nin mused. “Did Yahagi say something to you -- to piss you off?”

“No,” Obito tried to think back. “Well, yeah. But that’s fair. Taunting is ninja technique too.”

“I guess,” he said. Kakashi took a break from causing him agonizing pain, and the rag traversed his shoulders where there was no wound. “When did you get so understanding?”

“ _Ch_ ,” Obito snorted. “I just don’t know why you care so much.”

“I don’t like when people try and fuck with you, I guess.”

Obito turned his head enough to settle his eye on his teammate, but Kakashi chose that moment to drop the cloth and duck down to grab the kettle. He added hot water to the wok. 

Up until recently -- well. Up until a few hours ago, Obito had thought one of the reasons Kakashi followed him around all the time was out of misplaced guilt over the half-baked heroism that landed him in a coma for three years. Kakashi was the type of person who never apologized for the things he did, but that didn’t mean he never looked for forgiveness -- the guilt thing made sense. 

But another reason could be, Obito thought, Kakashi had been ordered to follow him. And a lot of things had changed about his teammate since the Kannabi Bridge but one thing hadn’t: he still followed orders to the letter.

When Obito woke up, he was suspicious of everything. Es _pecially_ the friendship his old rival offered him, that day in the field -- the same day Mission Control fucked him and Obito left only after causing ten-and-a-half trees worth of damage to the shitty government building where they were hiding. He didn’t think statues and fountains should be inside buildings, anyway. 

Obito had _nothing_ when Kakashi appeared to talk to him the first time. What he’d needed more than anything was a bed, a fucking meal, or just something familiar. And since his emotional state at the time was a paperclip and some lint -- it was probably too easy to win him over with a handful of promises, backhanded compliments and cute moles. After that, things started going straight; Obito was back on missions, with barely any fallout from his act of domestic terror at Konoha’s forward operating base, and even the ANBU dudes stopped tailing him everywhere he went. Mother of fuck, when he put his mind to it, there was some shady shit going on here -- and his roommate was kind of stuck right in the middle. 

Kakashi’s wearied voice came to him. “Sometimes, B -- I feel like I’m still waiting around for you to come back.”

The third possibility, Obito thought, was that his old teammate was telling the truth; he was just trying to help -- and he actually kind of wanted him, too. 

“How come you need to work out alone all the time?” The rag came back a little too wet and he felt a trickle of warm water down his spine. Kakashi caught it with the pad of his thumb and wiped it away. “Why don’t you ever tell me about the shit that’s bothering you?”

“Why don’t you ever fuck off and leave me some personal boundaries?” Obito snapped. With three different theories on the table, he never knew which one to act on. It probably made him sound crazy. 

They fell silent again while his teammate worked, and Obito sat in his hideous hypocrisy, feeling like there was a gigantic hole in his chest. He didn’t even notice it was there, most of the time, but when Kakashi was around it ached. It reminded him he was only half of all the things he was before. And his _‘you do your thing and I’ll do mine’_ approach to coexistence and recovery didn’t really hold up that well when he was surrounded by Kakashi all the time -- and frightened by what he could do in cold blood but miserably aware that he needed him. 

“Sorry,” he apologized through gritted teeth, and clenched his fists over his legs. “I need you, actually.”

Maybe -- if he just asked him, it would be okay. Kakashi would tell the truth.

But. 

If he really _was_ a double-agent for an underground ANBU organization tasked with keeping tabs on him, _and_ trying to get in his pants at the same time -- it would wreck Obito’s whole world. And he’d just started building it back up again, from the dust. 

“Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh.” It was the weakest lie he’d ever told.

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya boi got a raise
> 
> and a new job title
> 
> pastry chef motherfucker


	9. interlude: killing hands pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so i thought  
> what horrible role models the guys would make at this age

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Kakashi didn’t know why, but some small part of him had been under the impression that, once he and Obito made out a few times, things would smooth out between them. 

But they’d kissed. A couple times. A little bit. And then he’d sat around looking at his roommate’s empty spot on the couch, trying to get the motherfucking squad to leave because now wasn’t a good time -- but all somebody had to do was say his name three times and Kakashi rolled another. Before long he was high as hellfire, reminiscing on dark days, and still staring at that empty spot thinking _what the fuck?_

He knew better than to push. Anko eyeballed him all night like she knew him too well -- _watch your mouth_ she’d said, whatever that meant -- but Kakashi knew better than to push. So he waited, waited for him to come back, waited like he always had. When they finally left he cleaned all the shit off the floor. Sat down. Smoked a little bit. Played with his Sharingan. Got up. Set the kettle for tea. He did everything except stick his head in Obito’s room and ask him to come sit in his lap. 

Kakashi had waited three _years_. For fuck’s sake -- he could wait a while longer if Obito needed time to get his shit together, still. 

That said, the gods then saw it fit to place his roommate between his legs shirtless and oiled, and Kakashi would just be a lousy opportunist if he didn’t try anything at all.

 _I need you,_ he’d said. Well, shit, Kakashi thought. He could work with that. 

“We never spar anymore.” He said. “If you want to get better, you should be fighting _me_ , not the trees.”

The bark burn spanned almost the entire width of his back, just beneath the shoulder blades; it had clearly been a serious, but glancing blow. And Obito was lucky he wasn’t back in the damn hospital with more tubes and new scars. Kakashi activated his Sharingan. He dragged his hands through some of the oil gathered at the center of his teammate’s back and started to knead his fingertips in gliding strokes along his chakra streams, always travelling toward the heart. 

“What’re you -- ?”

Using the backs of his knuckles and the pads of his thumbs, Kakashi wove his way down either side of his spine in slow, circular motions -- like loosening the laces on a tall boot. When he reached the edge of the wound, he used the same technique and increased the pressure on the climb back up. Obito broke into pieces and uttered a light, pleased moan. It was a sound that filled all of his senses at once and Kakashi wanted to catch it and keep it -- make it grow.

So he couldn’t ever say something dumb as _your scars are pretty_ , but he could act, Kakashi supposed. He could act on the feeling. 

Even a total stranger to human anatomy could identify the imperialist knots that had taken root over his roommate's back, and how tensely Obito held his right side. Kakashi didn’t use a lot of force but he applied some friction to the connective tissue inside his shoulders, and set about trying to loosen the muscle around places where his chakra collected and pooled before flowing on. Each time one came loose, he felt the change immediately in the texture and vibrancy of the lighted pathways under his skin.

Obito whined. “How are you doing that?”

“I don’t know,” he chuckled, and he was so high he didn’t even remember how frustrated he was, earlier in the evening. “I, uh, finished cleaning everything. You should rinse off, though.”

His only reply was another beaten-down moan and Kakashi rolled his eyes but couldn’t stop the grin on his face. He dropped his hands beneath the gash, finally, and worked his way outward over his lower back with some of the same motions. Obito folded his arms over his legs.

“You know, if you ever need help stretching -- ”

“ _K_ ,” he whined again, muffled. 

Kakashi never thought a letter could make him so happy. He was ready to bless the tree that kicked his roommate’s ass.

“Why don’t we spar anymore, huh?” He tried again, wrapping his fingers over his hip-bones and digging his thumbs in. 

“If I could explain it, I would.” Obito said, hitched up like he was aching under torture.

Kakashi released him, and started to walk his knuckles up his back again, twisting and slow. A ripple of muscle contraction followed his hands, and the skin shuddered beneath them. 

“I know we should train, together. But -- ” Another shiver Obito disguised as a shrug. “I don’t know what it is -- I see you coming at me, and part of me thinks you’re gonna shove your hand through my chest.”

“It scares me,” he finished quietly. “I don’t know if I’m seeing the past, or the future.”

Kakashi let his hands fall. “Obito. I can’t think of any set of circumstances that would make me want to kill you.”

One breath. Two. Suddenly his teammate sat up straight, spun on his stool, and tugged him into a one-armed hug. He wasn’t going to complain -- it seemed like he’d said something Obito needed to hear, for once -- but he had to admit it was sort of jarring. Kakashi hoped getting murdered by him wasn’t actually something Obito was concerned about. 

“Rinse off,” he suggested lightly. “Then, if you lay down, I’ll work on your back some more.”

“Okay,” his teammate murmured, dropping his arm and leaving his face in his neck. “Just not in my room. It’s cold -- and there’s spiders.”

“Yeah? Still? I thought I got most of them -- ”

“No. Don’t kill anymore spiders. Please, Kakashi.”

“I thought they bothered you.”

“No, it was just -- “ He pulled away, rubbing a knuckle into his eye. “I got fed some misinformation. And we didn't communicate, which led to this big misunderstanding -- and a lot of things died because of it.”

 _Misunderstanding... with the spiders?_ Kakashi wondered.

Once his strange, droopy roommate shuffled off to shower, Kakashi busied himself trying to clean, again. It was the culture in the Land of Fire to sacrifice basically everything you own to your guests. If they want to eat, you give up your last bag of dried sweet potatoes. They want drink, you gotta surrender the cantaloupe and honey Senshin sake you’ve been saving for the last six months; and if they want weed, you gotta make sure they leave higher than they’ve ever been before. In Konoha, if your guests want to whip it out and piss on your floor, all you can do is congratulate them on their size and hope the smell doesn’t sink into the wood.

Kakashi kicked the stools under the table, collected the wok and the empty glasses and ferried them to the kitchen. He would hate himself tomorrow when he woke up to dishes in the sink and a weed hangover on his eyelids, but if all went well he’d also have lured his teammate into his room to spend the night. 

He didn’t care if Obito liked to be alone, not really -- he just wanted it to be for the right reasons, and not because he was driving himself mad overthinking stuff in enclosed spaces. Sometimes Kakashi banged on the wall and yelled about the water just to get his teammate out of his dark thoughts.

Once the living room was tidied well enough, he averted his eyes from the bathroom and carefully slipped into his bedroom. He threw off his shirt, changed into sweatpants, sniffed the pit of his undershirt and decided it was okay. In the common area he put the kettle back on its pad and brushed his teeth over the sink, then drifted down the east wing, all the way to the porch. The music was so much louder on Obito’s end of the apartment, and he was right -- it was colder, too. He stopped outside the bedroom and decided he ought to leave but first he looked around, just to see how many spiders were left. He counted two, and noticed with some satisfaction that his roommate was on the third volume of one of his favorite comic book series, _Ōkami_. If Obito was into white wolves and gigantic swords -- shit, Kakashi had a deal for him.

The thin walls were in constant conversation with the rain. It had faded to a busy flush in the back of his mind while he snooped, but when the water in the bathroom stopped, the sound of the storm outside came into sudden focus. 

“Are you touching my stuff?”

“What? No -- ” It was so absurd Kakashi leapt to his own defense a bit too quickly, and he turned around in time to see Obito’s eye narrow. Only his teammate could manage to look so serious shaking water out of his ear. “I was, counting. The spiders.”

“That’s an odd thing to do,” he muttered, padding past him into the dark room. “Since I told you to leave them alone.”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder. “Know your enemy.”

Obito rubbed his towel over his head, tossed it at the chair in the corner, then stood rooted to the spot. He scanned the walls, his compact student desk, the small window. Kakashi almost leaned on the doorframe to wait and then jumped away when something touched his neck. A spider-leg, he noticed. Stuck to the frame where he’d killed it. He brushed the body onto the floor. 

“I’m gonna bring my blanket.”

“Sure,” he hummed. “I have the next issue of _Ōkami_ , if you want. Amaterasu gets the Blade of Kusanagi, finally.”

“Sweet,” his roommate huffed, stooping to gather his blanket, and plucked the third volume off the floor. He tucked it into his armpit. “That mirror shield in the last chapter didn’t do shit!”

Kakashi snorted. “I know, dude, they just drew it in because it sells the sun god idea. And it looks bad-ass.”

He bounced lightly on his toes behind him while Obito led the way down the hall. It was hard not to focus on the fresh wound across his back and hate it. Most shinobi died in their twenties, thirties if they were lucky. Obito acted like his expiration date was already up and he was living on borrowed time. And it scared the shit out of him, sometimes, but not in any way he’d admit out loud. 

Kakashi surged past him into his bedroom and endured a familiar moment of double-vision as the Sharingan activated and his frame of life fluttered. He dug around inside his desk. The moon was a fingernail away from full and emitted enough light through the cloud barrier to steady his night-vision. Instead of snooping around his roommate’s pad, Kakashi thought, he should’ve been looking for -- ah, but, it wasn’t too hard to find. He turned.

Obito had laid on his belly with just his left leg under the blankets, face half hidden in the crook of one arm, flipping through comics in his bed like he’d always been there. And maybe he had, sort of -- just not in such exquisite detail. 

Kakashi fell to a squat and wagged the little glass bottle under his teammate’s nose. 

“What -- “ He squinted. “Are you kidding? Hemp oil?”

“It has vitamins that will make your scars happy.”

Obito frowned. 

Kakashi took it back and shuffled onto his bed mat to kneel at his side. “Just trust me. And take off that fuckin’ eye-patch.”

“Take off that fuckin’ mask,” he grumpled back. But his left hand closed claw-like over his eye and flung the patch away into the dark. 

Another gale of wind slapped the side of the building and there came a dull, mournful clanging of door charms and window ornaments. Kakashi had never been so happy in such shitty weather. He wanted to offer Obito a drop of the oil under his tongue but decided another time, for that -- instead he unscrewed the lid and let a few drops pool between his shoulder blades. It wasn’t odorless but it didn’t smell like bud, either. Hemp oil had musk to it, which was supposedly an anti-inflammatory and good for your skin, but Kakashi wasn’t going to tell Obito that, because he’d probably find some way to spin it into a bad thing. 

He took his time spreading the oil until he could taste it faintly in the air with every breath. Then the same way as before, he worked his fingertips along his teammate’s chakra canals, moving things along toward the heart. He thought of asking Obito where his sorest spots were, but figured he wouldn’t tell, and set about finding them on his own. 

He gradually increased the pressure with his knuckles and thumbs, using the Sharingan to seek out places where Obito’s chakra network looked sluggish or blocked. He loosened up a couple of the tougher knots on his right side -- finding them mostly between his neck and shoulder, and another on his lower back, just a little ways south of his hip. He only got at those problem spots every once in a while, though, because when he did Obito snuffed, whined, and writhed and lord of the fucking _har_ vest he was only wearing shorts and Kakashi wanted to teethe his way over every little irregularity in his skin.

“I didn’t think everyone would stay that long,” he said idly instead. “Or drink all my fucking liquor.”

“You could’ve kicked ‘em out,” Obito said, voice muffled over his arm. “But you’re so committed to _duty_ you can’t break rank, let alone mistreat a guest.”

“I know,” he admitted. At the base of his teammate's neck he applied some more pressure with his fingertips and swept them down along the grooves of his shoulder blades. “I can’t help it; it’s my basic programming.”

Obito snorted softly. " _You're_ basic programming, Kakashi. If I hear you explain one more thing using the phrase _'I'm a dog,'_ I'm going to move in with Genma and his ten-thousand roommates, I swear. And the chickens. I'll take it all."

Kakashi grinned. "A dog knows an empty threat when he hears it."

Obito snorted. He went quiet a moment. The flutter of a turning page. Then: “You know -- the one thing all these stories depend on is a neverending supply of evil. But I guess that's life.”

“I thought you said there was no such thing as good or evil.”

“No, _you_ know what I mean. Not evil, exactly. Darkness. Fear and loss.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “You told me those things made us better.”

Obito didn’t answer for a few moments. Kakashi lifted his hands away as he shifted up onto his side, closed his comic book, and pushed it out onto the floor.

“B?”

“Hm,” he responded. “I have to think about it some more.”

Kakashi relaxed his shoulders and brought his hands back, gliding his fingertips along Obito’s lighted pathways. He drew long crescents under his ribs, over his side, and he was just returning to the tight muscle grouping under his hip when Kakashi felt his gaze slip and an unwelcome gathering of heat in his groin. He decided not to scare his roommate away tonight. But his _don’t push_ mantra was weakening the longer the scent of the musk sat in his mouth.

Obito murmured something he didn't catch. His back lengthened as he stretched, then released with a shudder. “I didn’t know your hands could be so nice.”

“Will you stay tonight?” Kakashi wondered. “Until morning, this time?”

“Hm?” He hummed again, like he was distracted, or half-asleep. “What d’you -- ”

“I’m sorry I touched your dick,” he added quickly. “I won’t do it again.” 

“Huh? You touched my -- ” Abruptly his teammate sat up, and Kakashi dropped his hands to his lap, watching the rain-shadows play over his skin. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize, and it’s about something I don’t even remember.”

“But, then -- ” Kakashi felt his eyebrows draw together. “Why did you leave? I thought that’s why you never stay in the morning; you jumped out so quick the first time, I thought I blew it.”

“No, I -- what?” Obito pressed his palm to his forehead and shook his head. “I jumped out ‘cause I woke up in your bed with a _hard_ -on.”

Kakashi tried to hide a laugh, but he’d taken his mask down when his teammate asked and couldn’t can it in time. “Is that so bad? Tons of people wake up with wood. Even girls.”

He shook his head more vigorously. “No, man, not me. Nothing’s happened down there since I woke _up_. I was starting to think I was a vegetable too long -- like I had all the equipment but none of the juice.”

Kakashi laughed. He fell on his face and continued to laugh. In truth, he felt kind of bad, because he hadn’t even thought of that, and it was definitely one of those things that probably bothered Obito a lot but felt too awkward to bring up in conversation. _Poor B,_ Kakashi thought, amused. All this time he thought he was balding _and_ impotent.

“And Genma’s always making those stupid fucking cracks about my right nut,” his roommate continued, gruff. “And I always tell him the left one’s working just fine -- but it made me nervous for a while because I thought he _knew_ , somehow.”

Kakashi imagined him getting all hot and bitter with the poison user over having two functioning nuts. He worked hard to clamp down on his laughter. “You know he only says that stuff because he knows it’ll set you off.”

“One day I’ll set _him_ the fuck off!” Obito growled, offically set off, just at the thought. “Then we’ll see who’s laughing about my nuts.”

Kakashi turned his face away, giggled till he was near delirious. 

“You _are_ too high,” Obito accused. “But -- ”

He felt his teammate’s hand on his side, and Kakashi rolled with its tentative pull until he was flipped on his back. Obito kneeled next to him. 

“Thanks, anyway,” he said. “I feel better, actually.”

Outside the wind howled and internally Kakashi was about a second from the same -- because his roommate was looming over and down and finally his nose brushed over his cheek, and his lips closed under the left corner of his mouth. He’d done that two or three times already but Kakashi only just realized it was because he had a mole there, and he smiled about it but turned his head until Obito was forced to kiss him properly.

Kakashi wrapped his palm around the back of his neck, pushed his fingers into the short hair behind his ear. Nobody was around to interrupt this time when he settled in, tilted his head and split his teammate’s lips with his tongue. He engaged both hands at his neck and jaw to get a good angle on him, and felt Obito shift closer, planting his right hand in the blankets -- the left clamped over Kakashi’s side. He was still getting an idea of how to tease his tongue into action when the hand on his side started to track up and down as they kissed, shoving his shirt up until the skin under his ribs was exposed. When his teammate’s palm scraped over his bare skin, rough and unfairly hot, Kakashi shifted his back in the blankets and let slip a sound he never thought he’d hear from himself. 

He probably mind-fucked his teammate every day at least ten times before breakfast, and not once had Kakashi been the one moaning beneath _him_. The idea didn’t turn him off -- to his mild surprise, exactly the opposite. Books and fantasies didn't really hold up against the nuts and bolts of an actual relationship, he guessed. Obito was another person and he couldn't roleplay him, not for beans. He knew his teammate wasn’t intentionally rough, the same way he wasn’t always intentionally blunt; all he needed to figure out was how to control it, and coax more out of him. 

Obito ran his tongue over his lower lip and then left him there, panting in the darkness. 

Kakashi waited to catch a spare breath before he questioned it. “B -- ?”

“ _Obito!_ ” He caught himself in a sharp gasp when his teammate’s open mouth landed hot and damp in the middle of his bare stomach. His whole body instinctively twitched and curled inward. Then he felt Obito’s tongue start moving. Kakashi bit the inside of his cheek and swatted down at him. “B -- stop, B.”

“Sorry,” he pulled away and issued a hoarse, nervy bit of laughter. And he threw Kakashi’s own line back at him: “Too fast?”

“No, but if you -- ” Kakashi forced a deep breath through his nose before continuing in a much more neutral tone. “If you do that, I’m going to get, a fucking boner. I just want to make sure that’s what you're going for.”

“Oh,” Obito sat back on his knees and wiped his mouth on his forearm, still looking at his belly like he was out to make a meal of him. “Nah, I don’t know why I did that. I just wanted to say thanks.”

Kakashi lifted one arm to hide his flush in the cool crook of his elbow. “Annoying,” he breathed. His heartrate tripped and began to settle after the harsh sprint. 

He’d just willed the blood out of his face when the piney musk of his roommate loomed close again -- and he didn’t fight when Obito tucked his face into his neck, but at another scrape of the rough of his palm over the underside of his belly Kakashi bit the inside of his cheek, kicked, and groaned. 

“Tempt me -- ” He huffed, throwing his arm away from his face. “Just fucking _tempt_ me, and I swear -- ” 

_I will juice you till_ sun _rise,_ he finished his threat nonverbally.

“Okay, okay,” Obito withdrew. “I didn’t know you could make all those nice sounds, that’s all. I’m going to sleep now.”

After he rolled away, Kakashi finally got his shit together. All those years -- he’d underestimated how _vul_ nerable you had to be to make a relationship work; it was equal parts terrifying and exciting, and if he didn’t still think Obito had reservations about them and needed to go easy for the time being -- he’d work out all those kinks to _night._

“I’m tired of looking at this,” he admitted, tracing the length of his bark burn. 

“Switch?” Obito murmured. 

He wasn’t sure what he meant until his teammate rose to his hands and knees and clambered over him to the opposite side of the mat. Kakashi slid over to take his warm spot, and Obito settled back on his left side, behind him, this time. He waited a while and eventually a scarred hand slid over his hip, and he felt the tip of his nose brush the back of his neck, but other than that they didn’t seem to touch.

“Are you hard?” He voiced his suspicion. 

“ _No._ ” Obito said. Kakashi felt him shifting behind him. “A little.”

He waited, tongued at the corner of his mouth where a memory of his roommate lingered. Then, slowly: “Any way I could help?”

“Just go to sleep.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cant leave this fic without bringing the gang to the hot springs  
> the hot springs in china were doope  
> 


	10. holidays pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first part! long one!  
> please enjoy

Shinobi didn’t get a lot of scheduled leave time. The only organized holiday came once a year, in the middle of the rainy season. For just about a month, the village shinobi were free to tuck their uniforms away and spend their meager free-time updating gear, connecting with family, and cruising the city’s diverse holiday celebrations. 

The Goose Fair was the largest and most widely observed holiday, but in lesser-known corners of the village and its surrounding communities, minority ethnic groups and some of the larger clans organized events to eat, drink, and revel in their own fashion. The cherry blossom, sake, and dragon boat festivals were some of Obito’s favorites -- mostly for the food and drink -- then, at the end of the season, Konohagakure honored the multicultural origins of the Land of Fire with the massive Festival of Light.

Even in times of peace, hundreds of requests for aid from all over the country were denied every day in the capital. The shinobi world was in a state of social and industrial upheaval, and the challenge of maneuvering the dueling currents of progress and development had fallen to old-world leadership; for the village nin, this meant faraway missions involving anything from ousting dangerous yakuza in distant cities to overseeing _construction_ sites in the countryside. 

Civilians living in the capital often complained of ten-hour days, ungrateful bosses, and unreliable transportation -- petty shit, Obito thought. He had once spent ten whole _days_ tied up in a field of sugarcane supervising a controlled burn. And he hadn’t even wanted to sign on for the job in the first place.

The Fire Country’s seasonal crop burnings were so wide-scale that certain sectors needed to bid for extra funding and resources from the capital to help manage and maintain them. One of these yearly requests came from a farming community in the south responsible for producing 80 percent of the country’s sugar; it was immediately bumped up to A-rank in the Mission Control registries, and all the active jōnin in the city had lined up outside the Hokage’s door begging to take the most boring A-rank of the season. When Obito was picked to go with the convoy, he had to beat his way through hordes of the shitheads just to pick up his orders at the base of the Tower. 

Obito didn’t want to stare at a big nutting fire for two weeks -- fuck that, he’d rather take a dime home on the D-rank for unclogging drains or chasing thieves on 116th. But when Mission Control sent the summons in the mail and asked him personally, well -- he wasn’t going to say no to the paycheck. The bounty on an A-rank could feed you for a month, if you were smart about it. 

It was pretty fucking obvious he was selected for being a fire handler, but that didn’t make anyone on the force any friendlier about it. A few even tried to challenge him for the gig. _Big_ mistake.

He’d been thinking back, and -- Kakashi was right. Obito had been the cause of some pretty enormous messes, in the past. It probably wasn’t very easy to put a street lamp back into the sidewalk -- but he wasn’t _think_ ing about that when a four-ton fudge nugget like Fourteen-Digit Fuyumichi decided to smart-mouth him in the middle of the street. 

Until that day, he didn’t know all the streetlamps were connected via underground cables, either. 

Obito caused so much damage to public property, he was a natural di _saster_ on the books of the Hokage’s Public Security Bureau. They had a whole hedge fund in his name for just such an occasion as the aforementioned fudge nugget walking up on him and killing his vibe in broad daylight. 

He didn’t get it; Obito knew he was good at wrecking stuff, but he hated fighting. If anything, he had the mind of a pacifist -- but violence was the only language he knew, and sometimes, it seemed like the only one people could understand.

He had nothing but a whole bucket of _fuck-it_ s to give over who’s _fire_ jutsus were better, but he wasn’t going to trade in a mission that the Third _fuck_ ing Fire Shadow himself told him to go on. No. It wasn’t happening -- sorry dude. Walk away and keep your extra digits. 

Fuyumichi didn’t walk away. 

The sad thing was, while Obito was off staring at that big nutting fire, bored out of his mind, inhaling sugar fumes, all those shitheads from the Tower were probably left with the D-rank mission that was plugging the lamps back in the sidewalk and cleaning up his mess. 

Kakashi told him about the jōnin betting ring, but what he hadn’t told him was that Obito had picked up a demeaning nickname for his reputation: Ten-Trees Tobi. 

Yeah, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on the hoe who thought _that_ one up. 

Obito landed with a crash of snapping branch and bough in a cedar tree that marked the beginning of the black courts. The impact rattled from the wood up his ankles and numbed him to the knee; he fell back onto his butt to relieve some of the pressure and take a breather. 

A five-gallon water cooler was strapped to the cedar’s thick trunk, and he crab-crawled backward to hang his face under it and hit the toggle. It was the best-tasting water he’d ever had and for a few blissful moments Obito basked in the vital pleasure of quenching his thirst. Whoever was responsible for refilling the coolers on Mount Philo deserved a fucking good citizenship award, and one of those nice Hidden Leaf bomber jackets, or something. 

Obito released the toggle, relaxed his arms, and let himself melt over the cedar bough’s sandal-worn surface. He knew if he closed his eyes he’d be out for the count, but he couldn’t afford to lose track of the evening this time -- he actually had someplace to be. 

It took him a whole hour to descend from the black courts without using the zip. It had taken him a full _three_ to work his way up there, but that was a vast improvement from when he’d first started training on the mountain. Back when he was little, Minato-sensei often took Team Seven for training beyond the city walls -- just the thought of his old sensei’s unforgiving 10-mile _warm_ -up hikes exhausted him. 

Back then, Obito only messed around on the blue courts, and a little into the red. The blue zone was mostly fun stuff: slacklining and monkey bars and cargo nets. But each stage of Konoha’s ropes courses in the trees grew more difficult and more perilous as they scaled up the mountainside. 

The first stage of the black courts was a line of 13 vertical sanded logs, suspended with chains, dangling next to each other and always slowly spinning in the breeze, one way or the other. The idea was to get across to the next platform using only those gripless logs, and ignoring the fall to certain tree doom below. When Obito first started out, this had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Hugging his way across a dozen logs without losing his grip or cheating with the connecting chain had tested his physical fitness to the limit; the specific muscles he needed to engage weren’t his go-to _kick_ and _punch_ muscles, so they were weak and untried and he had failed miserably again, again, and again. 

Now he had the technique, the versatility, and the strength to sail through the black courts in one go. He could do it with his good eye closed. That meant it was time to change his routine, and his training grounds. 

Obito would miss the mountain. It was quiet, secluded, and even if you weren’t training there, the zip lines that cut through the courts from finish to start were worth the climb just for the ride. With a good running start Obito could snatch the hanging handle at the highest point in the black zone and for 50 meters just _soar_ with his fingers brushing treetops. The zips could take a lazy shinobi platform to platform, all the way back to the base of the mountain and the baby blue zone without breaking a sweat.

Of course, if you couldn’t hang on, for whatever reason, or you happened to fall while moving at that speed -- the zips became ridiculously dangerous. 

He was too fucking tired to leap his way down the entire mountain. Obito was going to be late, as usual. 

Once he made up his mind, he rolled to his feet, told himself he wasn’t dizzy, and reached out for the zip line’s hanging handle a few times before it made contact with his hand. Then he groped for the safety line and found nothing but a bungee cord hanging from the pulley, tattered and frayed at the end like the hook and clasp had been ripped off. Obito rescinded his previous praise for whomever filled the water coolers each day -- they still deserved a nice jacket, but the good citizenship award should be contingent on functioning safety lines. 

He was doing it; he was taking the fucking zip, no two ways, and he couldn’t buckle up, but whatever -- screw you, K. 

In a way, being nervous about disobeying his teammate shook some of the tiredness out of him and Obito managed to stay alert as he took his flying leap off the first platform. The zip was so long the slack dropped him almost 15 feet, at an angle out the tree and down the mountainside. Finally the pulley caught and jerked him into forward motion with a tinny grind. Obito absorbed the drop through his arms, hung on but accidentally slipped out of his crucial 90-degree bicep curl. As soon as his technique faltered, some muscles in his shoulders tore and cried out. 

Obito felt himself beginning to gather speed. It wasn’t like he was going to black out a _sec_ ond time, he thought. That was way too predictable. 

He switched off between his right and left hand to keep his arms fresh. One-handed wasn’t a problem for him -- he did it all the time. He was elite. The Sandaime asked _him_ to go stare at big fires. 

Sunset was unfolding its soft petals over the horizon and the whispering treetops bore prematurely black bruises of shadow. Obito loved this time of day. Sundown. The wind bit hard at his face but he was rushing right at it so he couldn’t really blame it. And then something weird happened. 

His hand never loosened on the hanging handle but Obito no longer felt it in his grasp -- he had blacked out, surely, but it was more like his eye was open and a very dark curtain had fallen over it. There was no more wind, but he remained conscious of its burn on his cheeks. The longer he peered into the darkness around him, the more it seemed to have shape, like he had been transported into some sort of _space_. All he needed, Obito thought, was a way to shine some light in on it -- 

_Shhhhhhhhh!_

Noise was flooding into the space in constant crescendo -- hissing, he thought. Like air breaking loose, or rushing water. The closer he listened the louder it became, until it began to warble and break apart like twigs in his ears. 

_Shhhhh-crack!_

The sound barrier rippled and broke and the lightless space collapsed around him, _in_ on him, and Obito blinked as light flooded his vision once more, and he realized with sluggish chagrin that he was, indeed, falling again. 

He struck out for a sturdy tree limb -- but he was moving so fast it snapped off and shattered like his arm was made of _dia_ monds. Obito barely even felt it touch him. 

Mother of _fuck!_ he cursed inwardly. Kakashi was going to rip him a new one, if he even made it out of this. 

Suddenly the darkness curtained down on him again and Obito fairly flailed -- _what the fuck is happening to me?_ he wondered. The first time, he could easily have passed out; the second time, a fluke maybe, or else he was tripping tired -- but this was the third time his consciousness jumped sideways into the black without his permission, and Obito was ready to take control of this punk-ass invasive dark space and teach it a lesson in mindless self-destruction -- 

_Whumpf._

All the wind was sucked out of his lungs and it nearly took his soul with it when he hit the ground hard, and blinked away the stars to find himself looking up at a tiny break of sky through the far-beyond trees. Gravity sucked his eyeball back into his skull. 

“What the… _fuck?_ ” The ground groaned beneath him. 

Obito looked down. _Oh._ His landing had been suspiciously kind. 

“Genma…” He said blearily. “I think you just saved my life.”

“Don’t take it personally,” came his muffled response, an instant before the poison user shifted violently and effectively threw Obito into the pine needles and underbrush beside him. 

“If I wanted to get my face shoved in dirt,” said his involuntary savior, pushing himself to his hands and knees and spitting on the ground. “I would’ve stayed with Anko.”

Obito’s head was spinning. Or, maybe it was the sky and the trees and the mountains that were tumbling around _him_. He was the center of the whole _world_ , he realized dimly. 

“Obito?” He heard the poison user slip in the leaves, then get to his feet. “Yo.”

He tried to make words and heard himself murmur something to the dusky evening air. He felt like he’d just surfaced from a high-pressure deep sea capsule, directly into the thin air of high altitude -- like he was going through decompression sickness, or something. 

“O _bito_.” Genma started to shake him. “Come on, man, snap out of it. Kakashi will kill me if I bring you back stupid.” 

Obito took a slap that forced his head around and his senses together. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and puked. 

“Nice,” came a compliment, in the sociopath’s gentlest tone. He fell to a squat next to him at arm’s length. “It’s okay. Get it all out.”

“Shut up,” Obito groaned. He had the shakes. The combination of muscle fatigue and the pure, world-upending terror of the last twelve seconds had him in a permanent state of mindfuck. He spat into the dirt a couple of times, which reminded him how linear physics worked in this frame of consciousness -- and it got some of the bile taste out of his mouth. After a while he sat back on his haunches, delirious, feeling at once bloodless and hot. 

“Oy.”

In the hand outstretched to him was a standard issue vacuum flask and Obito took it, popped the cap with his teeth and took a swig. All hail, cold water. He blinked his thanks and the poison user flicked his eyebrows at him. 

“Better?”

Obito lowered himself all the way to the forest floor, then propped himself on one elbow to keep drinking. 

“Where did you _come_ from?”

Obito felt his brow furrow and he lowered the flask, wondering what he was playing at, because the answer to that should be pretty fucking obvious. He wiped his mouth on his arm, and burped considerably louder than he expected to. Then: “I fell.”

Genma shook his head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anything until you were right on top of me.”

He forced another bubble of air out of his chest, downed the rest of his comrade’s water and tossed away the container. “Maybe you suck. I _fell_.”

Genma took the empty flask and rose to his feet, still shaking his head. “Bitch, you didn’t,” he hummed. 

“What’re you doing out here, anyway?” Obito stood, swerved and leaned, then steadied himself on the trunk of a nearby ginkgo tree that looked to be around 10 meters thick. “I thought you had a date tonight.” 

“So do you.”

“What?” He scoffed, on a higher note than he intended. “Me and -- ? Nah, that’s not what it is. He asked before any of that, stuff, happened. We’re -- I mean, we’re just, we’re going as -- just dudes.”

“Well,” the poison user mused, tucking his hands into his pockets and starting to move away through the wood. “Let me know if you need any tips on how to be _’just dudes’_ tonight.”

Obito took a step, wobbled a little, and pressed his palm to his forehead. 

“Hold up,” he said, easing into a jog to catch up. “Whadda you mean?”

The wiry jōnin shrugged, moving steady and surefooted up the rooty mountain path. He dodged over a threadbare creek, mounted the supine body of a tree felled long ago, and turned to side-eye Obito as he tottered up tiredly after him. The wood was overrun with thick blanket colonies of bright green moss. It looked soft, welcoming and fragrant -- Obito wanted to curl up and go to sleep in it. 

“Is that what you’re going to wear?”

Genma’s black choker necklace made him look beheaded in the deepening shadows, like his head was just levitating over his trunk.

Obito plucked at the chest of his training jersey, abruptly self-conscious. It was an old one he’d ripped the sleeves off of after coming out of his coma and finding he despised sleeves. He also didn’t like pants or socks overmuch. 

“Here’s something I learned a long time ago,” his companion continued, descending from the log with his hands still in his pockets. “You might have to live poor, sometimes -- but don’t ever look poor.”

“Fuck off.”

Obito hopped off after him and paused on the overgrown mountain path. He threw off the cross-sash of his bag, dropped it in the brush, and peeled off his shirt after it. Then he started to dig around, because it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d opened his bag to take out his lunch and noticed an article of clothing that wasn’t there before. It only took him a moment of digging to find it again, and he tugged it out; one of the sleeves unwound and something hit the forest floor with a tiny tin _clang_. Obito shrugged on the sweater and picked up the fallen object; it was one of Kakashi’s ginger mint tins. He cracked open the lid and looked inside -- nearly turned to brag at his condescending comrade, because K-dot had literally packed him a sweater and a joint, but when Obito looked up Genma rolled his eyes and his downturned smile looked even more mocking than usual. 

“Black looks good on you.”

 _Fucker_ , Obito thought, bleeding miserably into his face. He tucked away the tin, ducked back under the strap of his bag and smoothed out some wrinkles over his chest. 

“Where are you going?” He spat, trudging after him. 

“I’m on a quest,” Genma replied, dry as winter. “For a flower. And a lady.”

Obito snorted. “Fire lilies only bloom under _moon_ light. It’s barely sundown.”

“I’m going to get lucky,” he said, skipping up a steep overhang of turned rock and silt. “I deserve to get lucky.”

 _What a jackass,_ Obito thought. “How long have you been going with Anko?”

“Oh, we’re not together, not anymore. Tried it for a little bit when we were younger, maybe -- but it didn’t work out.”

“Raidō?”

Genma chuckled. “No way, man. Once you’ve lived with someone so long that they can answer your questions with well-timed farts, a relationship is pretty much off the books. He’s a great cook, and I love him, he’s my brother -- but the guy’s got a face like a _bed_ sore.”

He blanched.

“Oh -- “ his companion paused as if he’d just remembered he left the stove on. “Was that harsh? Sometimes I forget you haven’t fully come to terms with being the least attractive member of your clan.”

Obito clenched his fists, but had to loosen them to claw his way up the slope. 

“And just to keep it one-hunnid,” Genma idled on. “I think the scars helped a little.”

“Gen- _ma_ ,” Obito growled, and he launched himself with renewed vigor up the steep shelf. “I’ll throw you off this fucking mountain!”

The poison user glanced over his shoulder and yelped, increasing the speed of his ascent. Obito lunged for him but he sprang the rest of the way up the rise with a hairsbreadth of distance to spare. 

“Look, it’s nothing personal,” he offered, when they reached even ground. “Needles are my tools, poison is my craft -- it’s all about exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses; I can’t help it! You’re a big, easy target. Anyway, disgusting fingernails aside, you actually have a really nice asset.”

“An, asset?” Obito panted, leaning his hands over his knees. 

Genma brought his hands together in front of his face and then parted them like he was showing him the shape of a rainbow. “An _ass_ et.”

Obito felt himself flush as comprehension dawned and he struck out at the ground, sending a spray of rock and dirt flying at his snickering comrade. Genma only dodged and laughed harder.

They had crested a holt at the foot of a rocky outcropping, stilted high on the steepest side of the mountain. The clearing was edged with tangled wood and creeping vines, and the kind of toxic plant-life that didn’t mind choking out trees and killing its cousins on the age-old hunt for sunlight. 

Genma shaded his eyes and peered up at the looming rock face. It bowed inward where it met the sunken ground, forming a hollow like a theater or a lean-to garage. “Is this the peak?”

“No, it’s Devil’s Chair.” said Obito, picking his way toward the concave recesses of the outcropping. Dead in the center rose a pile of rocks, tabled at the top like the roof of a small temple, or a seat of stone. He clambered up the rise, into the shade of the overhang, and turned his back against its cool stone face. At exactly the height of the chair, the tanglewood grove seemed to part ways, then lace together overhead. The colors of sunset bloomed magnificently over the mottled gaps between the trees.

“I haven’t been up here since I was a kid,” said Genma. 

“Minato-sensei used to take us up here all the time.” Obito dug a pebble from under his ass and tossed it down the slope. He imagined it falling all the way down to the foot of the mountain. 

“Yeah, I remember training around here, a bit -- on the blue courts.” Genma tread surefooted and slow into the shadow of the overhang. “But I don’t remember this place at all.”

“Because nobody ever comes around here.” Obito explained, leaping down from the devil’s native seat. “You mean you’ve never heard the legend of the Fell Man?”

Genma shrugged. Nothing ever got through his exterior self-certain leer. 

“Way back in the day,” Obito began. “When the tree courts were being built, excavation crews from the city wanted to build around this side of the mountain, too. But when they started mapping the territory, the foreman’s brother disappeared. The search party combed the wood, and discovered a cave hidden somewhere here in these rocks. Inside the cave they found a pit -- the foreman could hear his brother calling out of it. Nobody knew how deep it went, and no light could penetrate it. The crew lowered ropes down, but didn’t reach anybody, and the guy inside was still screaming for help. Finally the foreman lowered himself into the pit. Only the rope came back up, and some bloody rags.”

“I guess the Hokage sent some shinobi to check it out, too,” he continued, brushing the wet walls with his fingertips. “But no one who found the pit ever came back from it. Eventually the whole project was cancelled and that’s why the courts only span the east side of the mountain. Legend says the Fell Man lives down there, luring his victims into the underworld.”

The hillside grove’s matted hairball of tree and vine was looking more and more wicked in the half-light. Genma scanned the wrinkled rock face and frowned at the shadows bleeding from its grooves. “Okay, I’m almost spooked. None of that’s actually true, is it?”

Obito continued to pick his way under the outcropping, deeper into its rocky recesses. He glanced back to where his comrade lingered on the devil’s doorstep. “I can show you the Den, if you want.”

Genma's bored expression broke just slightly and the senbon needle waggled dangerously at the corner of his mouth. “You _found_ it!”

He hurried over the jagged terrain and caught up just as Obito was climbing around a corner beyond the sun’s influence. “Yeah,” he answered, feeling the stone for handholds. He started to haul himself up and through a crevice in the honeycombed wall. “K and I heard the rumors when we were kids, and wanted to check it out. Then he dared me to spend the night there, and I double-dared him to do it right back -- we were fucking idiots.”

“What happened?” 

“It gets tight up here,” Obito called back. “I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

It was a lot tighter than he remembered, in fact -- and the memory wasn’t exactly loose to begin with. He was smaller then, he guessed, wiggling through a narrow vent that flattened him to a human pancake. If he got any bigger, this would be an impossible trip. 

A bunch of spiderwebs ghosted over his ears and Obito sneezed when something tickled his nose. He slid up his goggles and activated his Sharingan, but they were well beyond anyplace that light could lay fingers on, and he felt sweat start to bead on his forehead. Only the sound of Genma scrabbling behind him kept him moving. He had to keep moving. Forward, forward into the dark. The rocks seemed to inhale and expand around him, and for an instant Obito recovered a memory of intense pain under the crushing weight of similar, but very different circumstances.

“I can’t see shit,” Genma griped. “Obito?”

“Hm,” he responded. 

“Is this the way you and Kash came?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

“Did you guys really spend the night?”

“We tried,” Obito huffed, hauling himself forward, just eyes and ears above the panic ebbing through his blood. “We found the Den but neither of us slept at all, not with that black pit in the floor. Then, halfway through the night -- we heard something calling out to us.”

“From the hole? Are you _shitting_ me?” The poison user hissed. “What was it?”

“Not sure,” he said, with effort. “Sounded like voices, and then -- like something coming up after us. At first it was just little sounds, like something sliding over rock, but then we heard scratching, scrabbling, something pulling itself along, creeping up closer till the echoes made it seem like it was coming from all around us.”

“What did you guys do?” Genma asked quietly. 

A glimmer of light shone up ahead. Obito breathed a sigh of relief, deactivated his Sharingan, and pulled himself through a fissure in the rock into a chamber about half the size of his bedroom at home. 

“Kakashi blew a hole in the ceiling.”

The walls of Devil’s Den creased and arched to a point almost two stories overhead. The source of the light was an aperture in the ceiling just wide enough for the shoulders of two idiot kids to squeeze through; a beam of amber light fell from the opening into the abyss on the floor, like an evening star locked in orbit with its counterpart black hole. Obito felt himself transported back to that night many years ago, and remembered how scared shitless he’d been, listening to and _feel_ ing that darkness creeping in from the singularity on the floor -- but seeing the light comforted him. 

“So…” Genma pried, hovering against the wall like he thought the pit might expand and swallow them both. “What’s down there?”

Obito strode over to the hole and straddled it, bent over his knees to look deep into the void. After a moment, he snorted, then burped loud enough to echo off the cavern walls. “Nothing. Whatever evil was in here is long gone -- we blew a hole in the ceiling. The noises we heard were just from the search party they sent out looking for us. At least, that’s what we told ourselves.”

“Someone ratted on you guys?”

He shrugged. “Rin was worried about us.”

Obito finally walked away from his childhood fears and peered up at the shaft of light falling from the ceiling. Kakashi had been his fucking hero that night. Not that he ever told him. 

His teammate had always been good at banishing the dark. Obito was only good at inhabiting it. 

He shoved one foot into a crease in the wall and started to pick his way upward, grasping at loose shoal and underground root networks the closer he got to the surface. Finally he caught the lip of the opening and heaved himself back to earth. He was reaching back to pull Genma up after him when he noticed something familiar on the grassy hillside. 

“You are one lucky bastard,” he said, clasped arms with the jōnin, and pulled him out of the devil’s reach.

“Huh -- ?” Genma slapped some stone dust off his long coat, then took a good look around. “Oh, shit! Check it out!”

Against all odds, a handful of fire lilies freckled the wild grass. Obito stooped and stroked one of the flowers with the pad of his finger; it felt flesh-like, lukewarm and dry. They were bright orange in the center, fading to the color of old parchment at the end of each pointed petal. Obito felt a strange kinship with them, growing in quiet seclusion on the wrong side of the mountain. He watched Genma stoop to pinch one near the base of its neck and sever it from the root, then tuck its fresh bod into the pouch on the back of his belt. 

“Okay,” he said, with finality. “Let’s roll.”

Obito took one last look at the rare flowers blooming out of turn, and the unnatural hole in the hillside -- and he turned away, happy to leave it all behind. They kicked rocks back down the steep slope, silently picking up their pace as the trees leaned and shadows careened around them. 

“Genma?” said Obito, after working up to it ten times and chickening out. “You ever gone with a dude b’fore?”

The poison user paused abruptly at the next turn in the roughly-hewn mountain path. He grinned his twisted grin. “I knew you’d warm up to me.”

Obito scowled.

“Wish I could help you, but I’m straight.” Genma lifted his hands and shrugged. “My general rule is -- figure out the stuff she likes, and do that.”

“How is that working for you?”

“Not great,” he admitted, shameless. “Women aren’t gifted communicators, I’ve found.”

Obito exhaled hard through his nose. “Not like you and Raidō.”

“Exactly -- ” He clasped his hands behind his neck and resumed his confident shuffle down the footpath. “If Anko could just laugh at a fart, once in a while, maybe it would’ve worked out.”

Obito really couldn’t see it working out, but he didn’t say anything. He probably shouldn’t’ve asked the teen sociopath for relationship advice in the first place -- but, Genma was very perceptive in his own way, so. It was worth a shot. 

Obito sniffed his armpit, and brushed at some of the cobweb and cave debris clinging to his sweater. His mouth tasted faintly acidic and his skin had gone dry after the panic brought to him by the memory of the cave-in. He was a wreck. He didn’t know why he even bothered climbing _out_ of that hole, a second time. 

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Genma’s thin voice carried up through the wicked wood. “You had Konoha’s White Wolf stumbling down piss _all_ ey for you -- ”

“Huh?” Obito scraped some dirt out of his ear, along with one of those tree seeds with the little wings on it. “What’re you talking about?” 

“Ma-an,” Genma crowed, hands behind his neck, still scuffing along like he owned the mountain. “There were some days I watched Guy peel that dude off the _floor_ just to get him to show up for duty. It was lucky if he got his ass to FOB two hours _late_ , let alone without a hangover and a dumb excuse.”

Obito felt his brow furrow. “Kakashi doesn’t drink.”

“That’s probably why it was so easy for him to get smashed. I’m telling you, Obito -- it was a different Kakashi. You’ve never seen anyone with fewer goals in life. The youngest ANBU captain I ever heard of -- dragging himself around like a ruined old vet. It was pathetic.”

“Shut up,” he snapped, not sure who he was defending. 

Obito knew that his roommate got sad, sometimes -- but never sloppy sad, like him. The same way most people separated their socks and their underwear, Kakashi separated his emotions from his obligations, organized them, and tucked them away in the right places. He sectioned off specific times of day to be sad, and he showed it by standing in front of the Memorial Stone like a fucking grass statue. 

“All I’m saying is. He was different.”

“So what?”

“ _So_ , fat-hands...” He drawled, like Obito was missing something obvious. “I don’t know what you’re so nervous about.”

He wasn’t nervous. His mid-youth crisis was in full swing and Genma couldn’t understand the conflicts he was working through, or what was at stake, here -- nor was Obito interested in sharing his worries with his wiley comrade. They walked in a vacuum until the path smoothed and evened out. The forest thinned into sparse woodland. They hopped a chattering creek and crickets erupted in the low brush. 

“It’s just, sometimes,” Obito raked his hands through his hair, and his blood found refuge in his face with no one around to see. “I wanna do stuff with him, but, I’m not sure how.”

Genma stopped. He actually seemed surprised. “You serious? With that gigantic porno library in your apartment?”

“No,” he blustered. “It’s not all -- I mean, it’s _dif_ ferent -- ”

“Use your imagi _nation_.” he chuckled. “Fuck. You _must_ ’ve heard of doggy-style, living with Kash this long.” 

Obito swallowed and his nostrils flared, and even though he was inclined to agree with his first hunch not to ask Genma for advice about anything _ev_ er -- he also had to admit that he might be right; things could be simple if he would just stop thinking about them so much.

But the books didn’t help him. They didn’t say anything about the stuff Obito wanted to do, and he didn’t know if that made him some kind of weirdo. There were times all he wanted to do was bury his face in his teammate’s soft tum -- sometimes, Obito just woke up like that.

He’d only spent two nights sleeping over, partly because he couldn’t be bothered to move his blankets back into the spiders’ room -- but it was mostly because, even though he and Kakashi went to sleep in more or less the same positions, they always woke up tousled and starfished all over the place; it was a struggle to walk away from that cozy sprawl in the morning. 

Obito looked into the future and saw neverending repeats of his first uncomfortable boner in Kakashi’s bed. _No,_ he thought. Something’s gotta change. Either one or both of them would get over it and end the arrangement or Obito would be left with no choice but to give in and act on his barest instinct... and finesse everything from there, he supposed. But he was fraying at the edges, here, because he wasn’t sure if the right call was ahead or behind him. Maybe they would be like Genma and Anko; maybe it just wouldn’t work out, and they’d go back to being -- _what?_ Barely compatible roommates.

Once the base of Mt. Philo was behind them and the north gate of the city in sight, Obito tensed up worse than when all those rocks were crushing in on him. They flashed rank at the wall guards and leapt the boundary rather than force the city gatekeeper to wheel open the big doors. At the crest of the outer wall he could see the cluster of tall buildings at the village center. The faraway festive glow of Green Lake Park did battle with urban light pollution. 

They circled the wall, made leaps for the outer ring, and wheeled their way over grimy, low-down rooftops, across bridge, borough and terrace -- climbing higher and higher the closer they came to the middle of town. By the time they fell back to sea-level on the perimeter of the park, Obito’s muscles were burning and the sun’s rays were withering down behind the city walls. He was nearly unfit to disguise the fact that he was on his last wobbly leg. 

Genma jostled him unceremoniously toward the east gate, and paid for two tickets into the festival before Obito could blink the sleepy creeping clouds from his eye. 

“Don’t get teary,” he warned, pushing the ticket stub into his hand. “Kash bought Anko in, and told me to get yours in exchange. It’ll be a date swap. Now all we have to do is -- ”

Genma paused, peering through the thronging crowds. “Find them,” he finished. 

Obito sunk his hands in the pockets of his shorts, shrugged his shoulders against the stares, and jerked his head. “Follow me.”

“Riight,” said the poison user, trotting up behind him. “I forgot Sharingan is like radar. _So_ handy. Or is it an eyeball twins thing? But -- don’t you need to turn it on?”

Obito shook his head. 

“What’s the matter? Why so frowny all of a sudden?”

“Shut up, Shiranui,” he said lowly. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your cruddy _back_ story written all over your face.”

The wiry jōnin sighed heartily and slung an arm over his shoulders. “Own it, dog. That’s all you can do.”

Obito was too busy fortifying himself against the surging crowd to bother shaking off the false comfort. The crowds were bottle-necked between two broad columns of food vendors and activity tents, and the corny music wasn’t relaxing him at all. Obito ached for bed. Tea. A comic book, maybe. Kakashi’s pale stomach. 

“I think I see them,” he murmured. 

He’d just got an eye on Anko’s dark hair and then K-dot’s standout white when he noticed another thing, pivoted around the nearest corner, and fell to a crouch between two tents, unnoticed by the milling multitudes. 

“Whuh -- ?” He heard Genma’s confusion, then the poison user dropped in beside him. “What’s up?”

“I’d like to know,” Obito began, and he had the shakes again. “ _Just_ which fucker put flowers in his hair.”

Genma raised an eyebrow, stood and leaned his head out of the hideaway corner. Then he dropped back down to his heels. 

“Whoa,” he muttered. “I don’t know which one to look at.”

Obito chopped his hand through the air, incensed. “You said you were straight!”

Genma flapped a hand back at him. “ _Gay_ and _straight_ are more like guidelines. Like, at any moment, the odds of me pursuing a female outweighs male 10 to one. I hate to say it, Obito, but for a lot of people -- Kakashi is the one.”

He groaned, shoved the heels of his palms in his eye sockets. K always looked like some kind of fucking _seraph_ living among a bunch of grubby nematodes -- how the fuck was he going to make it through the night with flying _tree_ seeds coming out his ears?

“Obito,” said Genma, in a sagely tone. “What you’re feeling right now is your _nads_ talking, telling you to provide and protect -- rip shit apart for your lady. You only woke up from your Big Sleep pretty recently, so, you probably haven’t had a chance to get used to it. Part of becoming a man, my fiery friend, is learning the language of your nads: it’s up to you to decide when to move in on something they’re telling you about, and -- more importantly, I think -- when to ease up and move out.”

“I think,” he grit back. “They’re telling me, to throw him into a wall.”

“Oh.” Genma paused. “Well -- yeah. Those messages can sometimes be hard to parse out.”

“Don’t you think -- ” Obito panicked, lifting his face from his hands. “I should be dating, I don’t know, _inside_ my own _species?_ ” 

Genma’s expression went very stern. He fisted a hand in his sweater and yanked him to his feet.

“Alright -- listen up, clueless, ‘cause I’m gonna give you some free advice.” He said. “When you first start going with someone, it’s because you’re kind of feeling them, and they kinda feel you too. But if you can’t feel your _self_ , first -- then you have no business being in a relationship in the first place.”

Obito had the shakes. 

“Yo, do I have to slap you again? It’s not good for my reputation, you know -- hitting bitches.”

Obito snapped out of it, spat and hissed. “Fuck off.”

“Good,” Genma nodded, and craned his head around the tent to peer into the crowd. “They’re at the shit-on-a-stick tent. Let’s move.”

He was wrestled out of the shadows and Genma roped his arm over his shoulders again to steer him straight. Obito suffered every step. 

When they were near, the poison user called out. Anko turned, a stick of fried scorpions in hand. Obito flung off his comrade’s reviled touch and slunk like a guilty animal into his teammate’s side. 

“B?” Kakashi chuckled, wrapping an arm around him. “What’s wrong?”

Obito tucked his face into his neck, glad for once that his mask was in place. He couldn’t bear to see those cute moles, right now. He still kind of wanted to go home -- but his nads were telling him to stick it out a little longer. “Nothing.”

“Something happen?” He hummed, quieter.

Obito knew his actions were nothing more than a mild curiosity to most of the public, and his fellow jōnin, but he still felt their stares weighing in heavily on his back. He tried not to care; his roommate was the next closest thing to home he had and he just needed to feel a little bit of that, after the fucking day he’d had. “We went to Devil’s Den.”

In his peripheral vision he saw Kakashi’s near eye flutter wide. “Why would you go back there?”

“Not sure.” He answered weakly, shrugged against him. “To see if I could get out again, I think.”

“Maa, Obito,” he said kindly. “It didn’t beat us then -- it can’t beat us now.”

“So how ‘bout it, Kash?” Genma interrupted. “I’ll trade you. The prettiest girl in the village -- for Ten-Trees Tobi over there.”

Obito went rigid and turned his good eye on the wiry jōnin. He was sick and fucking tired of the verbal abuse and ready to pop a couple of heads open if it meant a night free from the poison user’s offhand taunting. After all the time they’d spent together, all he’d learned about Genma was that he was a self-certain prick, and he made terrible company.

“Oh, hey,” Kakashi stopped him from putting the squeeze on their grinning comrade with a hand on his arm. “This is for you.”

His teammate stepped up to him and Obito felt something heavy and cold settle around his neck. He looked down. Kakashi -- got him -- a chain?

Genma whistled appreciatively. “Iced _up_.” 

Obito dumbly fingered the shiny, close-knit silver links over his black sweater. The cool touch of metal on the back of his neck was soothing, somehow, and he felt some of his neurotic heat die down. “Thanks, K,” he murmured.

His teammate’s eyes curled, and Obito came wearily to the realization that Genma was probably fucking right. About a few things -- but, most importantly: that this was a date; Obito was clueless; and Kakashi was the one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been such a pleasure introducing genma to yall. from here im gonna sink my fangs into our other darling secondaries


	11. holidays pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo~
> 
> sorry for the wait  
> some shoopy art for u

As the sun fell down on the Goose Fair, the torches went up. 

Long ago, farmers and merchants from all over the country would journey to the capital in the middle of autumn, hoping to take advantage of the bonanza that always followed the rice harvest. Geese were not native to Konoha, or even the prefecture; the strange, noisy fowl were driven from the north for trade each year, in such multitudes the inhabitants of Konoha and the surrounding countryside came to tell the season just from the thousands of geese clogging the roads. Supposedly, the birds were fitted with leather booties to protect their feet on the long journey.

And so the holiday came to be known as the Goose Fair. 

In recent years, there were no such feathered odysseys; the fair had evolved from a livestock and trade event to a full night of noise and entertainment for the denizens of the city, behind and beyond the wall.

Kakashi wasn’t into the flowery harvest festivals of autumn as much as he was the fighting festivals. 

The Head of the Hokage's Public Relations Bureau promoted the Hidden Leaf's fighting festivals as celebrations of good health and sportsmanship. The monks claimed that organized rough-and-tumble was a form of worship.

Kakashi didn’t know if the drunken brawling and bacchanal of fighting festivals truly pleased the gods, but it sure as hell pleased him. And a good deal of the young men living in town. He’d heard arguments that the tournaments could be simple, brutish, and inelegant -- and Kakashi couldn’t deny that pole-toppling matches were essentially mass beatings for the asinine goal of bearing a pillar to the ground -- but his competitive nature defended the holidays as ceremonial artifacts worth keeping. Whatever the reasoning behind it all was, the city had hosted huge spectacles of sacred violence every year since the founding of the shinobi nations.

Next weekend would mark the onset of just such a spectacle: the Festival of a Thousand Warriors, a two-day event that attracted tourists and travellers from all over the country for its live music and dancing circles, demonstrations of ancient martial arts, and performances by highly skilled theatre troupes -- many of whom were only in Konoha once a year. Kakashi personally liked it for the _kendo_ rings, sparring tournaments, _sumo_ matches, and vicious _mikoshi_ fights. 

Each year at the Festival of a Thousand Warriors, hearts would be won; friends, betrayed; and blood, inevitably shed. 

He and Anko were walking around the dancing corridor on the edge of the park hardly eight minutes before the flutes and bells and murmuring _taiko_ drums started to get obnoxious. Vendors could usually tell village shinobi from civilians, and for the most part they were left alone, but less mindful hawkers didn't have the same restraint; the salesmen held up dozens of people at a time along Green Lake Park's intespersed roads and bridges -- shouting, stamping, and singing their slogans loud enough to drown out their neighbors’ calls. They used showmanship, turns of phrase, magic tricks, everything except summoning a lesser demon and having it spin on its head, all to attract attention to their wares. Some of these noisy ringmasters of trade were sort of talented -- experts in the art of misdirection, only pushy enough to be charming -- but most were tasteless liars who had no respect for boundaries. As soon as Anko glanced sideways at a display of jade bracelets, an old woman merchant had grabbed her by the arm. Big mistake. 

When they left the busy dancing corridor behind, the byway eased into quietude on the park's eastern rim. The stalls gave way to an overhung view of the lake's molasses waters and a single-file line of tall gingko trees marching alongside a thick railing; on their other side, a few lighted activity tents, a man selling shit on a stick -- and then the road darkened and gave way to careful landscaping, sparse forest and garden, and the hushed chess patio. 

“Think you might’ve gone overboard?” He wondered idly.

Anko glanced back at the distant lakeside corridor, and the small commotion within the festivity, rippling outward as a cooing crowd gathered around the ill-used jewelry merchant. 

“ _Ac_ tually, shithead,” she said, winding up one arm with a hand on her shoulder as if she was remembering an old injury, or a very satisfying knock-out. “Touching someone without their consent is simple assault. And the art of jujutsu is, in itself, an act of self-defense. I can’t be blamed for the property damage if _her_ body did the smashing. And I wasn't just going to do nothing. Justice doesn't _fall_ out of the sky, Kakashi. Justice is _exacted_.”

“That’s cute,” he hummed. “But if you still want to join the Military Police, it’d be a good idea not to start with a reputation.” 

Anko held her ground for a moment, but her shoulders sagged somewhat. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Had he... Kakashi thought in the following silence. _Assaulted_ Obito?

It couldn't be okay just because he was asleep both times and didn't remember -- _Damn it_. Kakashi didn't express his frustation with himself but he rolled his eyes to the sky and considered asking for mercy. He wasn't any better than those fucking hawkers.

“You know," Anko said, brooding. “Genma would've talked her in circles; he'd convince her all her jewelry was fake. Destroy her business. Slip some cheap jadeite out of his sleeve and show the vendor all the imperfections, the customers, too. I've seen him do it to teapot merchants, and seal-carvers, even the guys who sell all those cool gourds -- makes such a nuisance of himself that they always give him what he wants.”

“Pretty fun to watch."

“Yeah, it is," she agreed, eyebrows drawing close. "Until _you’re_ the one he’s goosing.”

They circled the trunk of a broad zelkova tree at least 30 feet tall, and ducked around the thicket of red strings falling from its upward-spreading branches. Tied to the end of each string was a tiny scroll bearing a handwritten wish or prayer for the next season. Monks and travellers meditated inside a nearby pagoda, a glow in the shadow of the treeline. The trembling notes of a bamboo flute fishtailed over its bat-winged terraces. Kakashi liked how the small shrines seemed to rest belly-down over the earth.

Even though he'd outgrown the games and the heat and the noise, he still liked the atmosphere of the autumn harvest festivals; he liked the _oni_ masks leering out of the crowd, and the heavy demon scrolls hanging from trees and tents -- ghosts on every threshold and 220-pound torches lighting the winding pathways through the park. Kakashi liked holidays with both _yin_ and _yang_ to them: a shady side, and a sunny side of the hill. 

Anko was a year younger than the rest of them, and still felt the primitive desire to scrutinize every single stall and table in the park before carefully selecting the very best of the _amezaiku_ candy crafts. 

This year it was a representation of Kazegami, god of the wind. Anko made short work of beheading the majestic white pony. 

“How d’you eat those things?” So far he had observed the fair and its fair-goers with one eye covered -- and already thought he had the gist of it. Most of the stalls were designed explicitly to manipulate small children; the vendors were trying to rip you off; most everything was rigged. Even the small-time hawkers on their blankets were just as likely to sell you something as steal from you. “It’s straight sugar.”

She licked syrup from her lips, eyelashes dripping torchlight. “You know, these were originally made as offerings, to please the goddess of the sun.”

Kakashi shrugged his hands together behind his neck and gauged the time from the dimming skies. “Is that why you made me pay for it?”

Anko’s shit-eating grin. “Some gender roles,” she declared. “Are acceptable.”

He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you ever went with Genma.”

She shrugged. “He was there when I needed him.”

Well, that sounded pretty fucking romantic. Kakashi couldn’t picture the poison user being around for _any_ body -- not without direct orders or promise of a free meal. Genma was the one who got the administrating officials over at Konoha's forward operating base to start offering tea and hotcakes to active jonin at the monthly meetings, instead of just 30 days of duty logs and mission reports to go through. His simple, disarming suggestion doubled attendance -- but in the end, just about the same amount of work got done. 

“In what way?”

“Well, honestly?” Anko held her beheaded pony aloft, closed one eye, and peered through the candy craft like a syrupy lens to the red glow of paper lanterns threaded through the lakeside trees. “We both started working nights at the same time. He was the only one around when I got back to the apartment, sometimes. I’d walk in in the morning thinking, O.K., I only need a joint, or _five_ , and there he would be. Goddamn chimney. And after a while it became sort of comforting, and reliable.”

“That’s really how it worked.” Kakashi forgot his question mark because he didn’t believe her.

“That’s how it worked.”

“Until it didn’t.” He pressed. “What happened? You switch off nights?”

“No,” Anko frowned, then erupted, brandishing her candy offering like a sword. “I got sick of the bitch waiting around for me to make dinner. Like, I just got back from 70 hours of _ground_ -scoring in the Fens -- it’s time for _you_ to serve _me!_ ”

Kakashi hummed an affirmation, sorry he brought it up. Sometimes when Anko got going, she just got _go_ ing.

“I don’t wanna have sex with you,” she continued, overloud. “I want a _hot bath_.”

“Great, Anko,” Kakashi muttered, matching some passing stares with one half-lidded eye. “Will you calm down? Now all these people think I’m an inconsiderate partner.”

“Well, K, you probably are,” she announced, hand on her hip, wand aloft. “But it’s nothing to worry about -- all men your age are inconsiderate partners.”

He felt a snapback answer swelling in his chest, but let it deflate. She was probably right. 

“Aw,” Anko said, suddenly gentle. “I’m sorry. Soft spot?”

“I don’t have soft spots.” Curse the empathy of women. 

“ _O_ -kay, big guy,” she chuckled. “I understand. Let me know if you need anything. And don’t forget about dinner tonight.”

“Oh, yeah. Where is it again?”

Anko flicked her tongue against her teeth in an exaggerated _tsk_. “The south gate. Asuma’s friend’s restaurant's grand-opening -- _seafood hot pot_ , remember? They’re letting us eat for free.”

“Oh yeah,” he said again.

“Left your enthusiasm in your other pants again, I see.” She grinned suddenly. “Or is it nerves?”

Kakashi shrugged. 

“You know,” she continued, in an overly ponderous tone. “I met Obito when we were _really_ young. Like before the Academy. Did I ever tell you about that?”

He grunted. 

“I wasn’t more than three years old,” she began, unbothered by his enthusiasm. “And I didn’t understand a lot about the world, but I understood nature, I think. I knew about small things -- always have. And one of my favorite things, I remember, was Green Lake Park in the summertime. All those dragonflies!”

He couldn't tell if the sudden glow was from the torches or from the kunoichi's primordial memory. “Dragonflies, filling up the skies -- small scaly demons! It was the most amazing thing, to me. I used to stalk them in the long grass, like one of those famous hunter-explorers, you know? I would sneak up behind them and catch their rice paper wings between my fingertips before they could even flutter. Then I just perched them somewhere, and let go; sometimes they flew away, but other times they stayed and looked at me, and I would look at them -- big eyes and small fangs and rainbow scales, no ego to get in the way of us -- ”

Kakashi cleared his throat. “Um, Anko -- ”

“Okay, okay,” she flapped her free hand without looking at him. “I’ll get on with it. Sheesh. Put a few nice words in a line and men think they’re gonna sprout tits, or something.”

“I just thought -- ”

“Stop interrupting me, and I’ll get on with the story!”

Kakashi dropped his hands to his pockets. They turned off the outer perimeter of the lake and re-entered through the east gate. A bored officer from the small gateside Military Police station remembered them and waved them past the ticketing station.

“One day Obito was there,” Anko went on. “Where I was playing in the wild pampas grass. I saw him with a group, before, but he'd wandered off, I guess. He shared his orange wedges. I asked if he had a good nap. He said he had a bad dream. Then I tried to show him how to catch dragonflies."

She smiled, a little sadly. “He was terrible at it. They kept getting away from him, until finally he got so frustrated he brought his hand down on one, right where it landed to rest in the grass. I screamed, and I hit him -- I thought he'd killed it, at first. The dragonfly was alive, but one of its wings was broken. I was angry, still, and I told him dragons die when they can’t fly, and this one would be really sad on the ground while all of its friends played in the sky. And then I noticed -- he was crying. He really felt _bad_ , you know? Spent ages picking it out of the grass, real gentle, and he carried that dragonfly around the whole rest of the day. Until it died, I suppose. I don’t think his family was very nice about it.”

Kakashi thought this story explained a lot about Obito, anyway, and he dragged one hand over his face and looked up at the sky a second time, filled with dorky longing for his roommate. 

“You should count yourself lucky.”

“Hm?”

“Well, Obito’s very,” Anko parried for the word. “Sensitive.”

Kakashi tossed his head. “Come on, leave him alone -- ”

“It’s not an insult,” she insisted. “That’s your problem. You think if somebody’s not a closed box then they’re some kind of headcase -- but it's not a weakness to feel strongly about things, and _guess_ what, Kakashi -- you can’t solve every problem with distractions and weed. Eventually you’re going to have to nut up and address the issue -- ”

“How?” Kakashi snapped, feeling in over his head. “What issue? I don’t understand.”

“From what you _told_ me," she said slowly, like he was an imbecile. "It sounds like he’s still conflicted over you guys -- ”

“But why?” 

“Stop interrupting me!” she snarled. “Idiot -- he’s probably picking up on the fact that _you_ are, too!”

“What d’you mean?" He lifted his shoulders and released them in a futile gesture. "I love him.”

“I think you love that he needs you.”

Kakashi shook his head. She had it all backwards.

“Okay now, be real,” the kunoichi demanded. “What d’ya like about him?”

“He smells like honey behind his ears.”

Anko abruptly lost step and caught herself with a jump and a skip, giggling. “Oh, gods. That is something only a dog person would say.”

Kakashi blinked. Present, but neutral. 

“Okay,” she said again, sighing. “I won’t make you talk. But, it’s like I said. Obito is sensitive, for a boy. If you haven’t been open with him about something, he’ll feel it. Overly aggressive affection does not a relationship make.”

“Overly ag _gressive?_ ” Kakashi nearly yelped -- feeling kicked. “Your mom’s a hoe!”

“See?” His companion _tsk_ ed, shook her head, and raised both hands to her ears, as if she’d proven something everyone doubted but didn't want to brag. “You should work on this. Anytime something makes you feel insecure, you resort to personal attacks and run from the real conflict. That’s a great strategy for burning off extra energy, and avoiding meaningful conversation -- I’m just not sure that’s what Obito needs, right now.”

“Anko,” he paused, took a breath, returned to neutral. “I can give him, everything he needs.”

“Aw.” She said, again, and yielded to a huff of laughter. “Okay, fine -- enough advice for today. Good medicine leaves a bitter taste, you know. I’ll just be support, the rest of the night.”

“Thanks.” He muttered. “If I believed that.”

“Cheer up!” she said, punctuating the command with a sharp elbow in the ribs. “Sheesh. I didn’t mean to give you all that stuff to think about. I’m sorry. Hey, look -- ”

Anko suddenly steered him off the main drag, through a shoulder-deep curtain of hanging scrolls. Kakashi's ninja instinct turned its back on him and he was slapped unpleasantly by a hanging illustration of Konoha’s triple bladed kunai. Inside, the tent was deep and narrow, with a partition in the middle. The right side was a throwing range. Kakashi groaned. Anko wrapped her fist around both the strings on his hood and used the grip to haul him toward the table in the entrance.

“You’ll love this game -- ”

“Anko. I’m too old for this.”

“No, you’re not.”

“We’re _shinobi_ \-- “

“They _know_. They’ll set up a special target for us. There’s rules against dojutsu, though, so keep that eye covered.”

The civilian challengers were throwing crudely carved wooden knives at a target made from canvas, painted with a bullseye and thrown over a stack of hay bales. The canvas was clearly several times too thick for any amateur knife thrower to penetrate, but the fools lined up, anyway. 

“Asuma won his first set of trench knives here. They were pretty nice.”

The other half of the tent appeared to be the merchant part, and Kakashi had to admit the metalwork on some of the display knives looked pretty decent, even though the wooden ones being used in the knife-throwing challenge were whittled trash. Even as they entered, a man was whittling over the counter on the merchant side. He saw them, spun his flip-knife in a hand with only three fingers, and grinned; all his teeth were missing on one side.

“What!” Anko brayed over the scoring table. The man between her and the throwing range was built like Hokage Rock. A tattoo hid inside one of the folds of his head. “40 kools for just one go? That’s twice as much as last year!”

“But look what you could win,” said the man. His voice was something thick gurgling back up a drain. “So much better than last year -- and we’ve been just _giv_ ing them away. Haven’t we, Ajimi?”

On the other side of the tent, the whittling man grinned and bobbed his head. 

“Ajimi-san used to be head chef for a great yakuza chief in Boukan prefecture,” said the tattooed vendor. “He was known worldwide for making the finest sushi in the land, with the finest selection of knives -- until, one day, he forgot to send an appetizer.”

“The chief sent him packing,” he continued, leering over the table at them. “Right after cutting out his tongue, with one of them _fine_ knives.”

 _Fuck these guys,_ Kakashi thought. 

“Yep,” the man bellowed. “No one knows a good blade the same way he does. Ain’t that right, Ajimi?”

“Okay, we don’t care,” Anko informed him. “I’d like to buy one round, and we’re going to split the throws.”

One of the things Kakashi liked best about Anko was that she could be boisterous, without being ill-mannered. And, she remembered a time before ego -- the thing that separated her and the world from that tremendous _us_ ness.

The vendor didn't appear bothered and accepted the kunoichi's money. When the civilians finished their game, the back of the tent dropped, and the length of the range doubled; at the far end yawned a dim portal to the evening sky, bronzing half-light over a field of long swamp grass. Some roadies entered the range rolling large disks over the packed dirt and sawdust. They wore white paper masks with a single horizontal brush stroke across the bottom. Chickens scuttled in and out with the commotion. The faces on the disks were painted bullseyes over grained wood, and the back sides were made from some kind of metal. 

Kakashi got an idea what they were doing when he identified a hand-painted paper seal attached to the metal backing on one of the disks. Altogether there were five of them, ranging from as large as 40 to as small as 11 inches in diameter. Finally a girl entered the range, masked and gloved as well but seemingly much younger than the other carnies. She climbed to the uppermost bale of hay and sat down quite in the middle of things.

“This is new,” Anko murmured, tracking the wooden targets with her eyes.

“Don’t worry about Sayo,” gurgled the tattooed vendor. “She could dodge a bullet from the heavens!”

At the counter on the far side of the tent, Ajimi grinned and bobbed his head.

The girl crossed one leg over the other and made a strange gesture, one hand in front and one hand behind her back. The roadies backed away and all five of the disks stayed balanced on edge; then, seemingly of their own accord, they began to turn. 

“Sayo joined us just last season,” the vendor beamed proudly. “Found her off in the Fire Pit, didn’t we?”

Kakashi suspected the girl was a stray -- not a rogue ninja but a wielder of chakra without allegiance to any country. They were increasing in number lately, but still regarded as rapscallions by most, without loyalty or obligation; they were seen as undisciplined, and even dangerous. Konoha was one of the few places in the shinobi realm that didn’t apprehend such individuals on sight. 

The Fire Pit was a mythological place for banished things. 

The painted targets spun sluggishly a while over the ground, carving interweaving arcs like drunken wagon wheels through the packed dirt and sawdust. Slowly the disks gathered speed until they took to the air all at once, each with a lurch and a spray of golden dust. They rose to about eye-level -- some five or 10 yards away and others hovering at the very back of the narrow tent, bouncing languidly in place like they were suspended on long elastic bands. Kakashi studied their movements, and the movements of the girl. Without his eye, he couldn’t decide yet whether it was something simple as puppetry that made the targets float, or something complex as time-space jutsu -- or, if it was something he had never seen before.

Kakashi liked the idea that there were still mysteries in the world, a few things left unexplained. The game piqued his interest, anyway, and he suggested Anko take the first throw. 

“You get three tries,” said the vendor. “Bullseye on the biggest one earns ya 10 points, and bullseye on the small guy is 50. And since we know well how talented the kiddies are around these parts -- anything outside the center’ll get ya style points, and nothin’ else. Sound fair?” He chuckled grotesquely. 

“Tell me we don’t have to use those awful _wood_ en kunai.” Anko groaned. 

“Sorry, miss." He leered, not a single apology in any one of his shifty gray teeth. "Those is the rules.”

“You guys're joking -- the target’s made of metal!”

“The face is three and a half inches of solid basswood. Nice and soft. Great for carving.” The tattooed man sat heavily over his stool and leaned one elbow over the table. “Only reason they got silver backing is for the magic show. Silver’s real conductive, you know.” He winked.

 _Ah_ , Kakashi thought. Electromagnetism. He scanned the range of floating disks again. With the Sharingan, he would probably be able to pick out the width and depth of the girl’s electric field. He could only guess at the function of the spell tags -- containment, or homing beacons, to direct her chakra, perhaps. Some kind of power cell, maybe.

“Pretty expensive materials,” he hummed. “For a bunch of itinerant carnies.”

“Oy -- ” The old badger spread his arms. “Do we look like carnies to you? We’re per _formers_ \-- and craftsmen. Folks chase us city to city for our metalwork, ain’t that right?”

Anko picked up one of the crudely carved wooden blades. She flipped the flat across her knuckles and over her palm, spun it once, and balanced it on the pads of two fingers. It was heavy on the pommel end. “No one’s chasing you for your woodwork, that’s for sure.”

Ajimi unleashed a sound between a laugh and a wheeze. There was a clatter and a shuffle as the man emerged from behind the merchant counter, and started walking slowly over. Dude had the posture of a _bonsai_ tree. When he finally arrived in the range he held out the knife he’d just finished carving, and offered it to Anko. 

“You’re right, Ajimi,” rumbled the tattooed man. “Our first shinobi challenge all day. This should be interesting.”

Anko accepted the wood-carving. Kakashi saw her trying not to frown at it. There was still a twig with a leaf on it coming out the handle. “Thank you, Ajimi-san.” she said graciously. 

Ajimi grinned his half-empty grin.

“It’s 50 points to pick a prize from the table here,” said the mountainous man, gesturing to an impressive array of junky flip-knives and hairpins scattered across the scoring table. All flashy bone handles and beat-up jadeite. “A hundred to pick from the spinning rack, and one-fifty for something from that side.” He flipped a hand at the merchant half of the tent. “Give it your best shot. But be warned -- our girl can get a little competitive.”

Kakashi glanced at the hay bales stacked in the center of the range. The stray nin was the picture of indolence, flat-backed on the highest bale with one leg swinging. Her mask was red-faced and long-nosed, with an impressive black unibrow. It was a depiction of a _tengu_ \-- the spirit of a crow and a warrior priest. 

“Not a problem,” Anko grinned, dropped the throwing knife on the table with the others and laced her fingers together to stretch them forward until her knuckles popped. “She can float those things as high as she likes -- I’m not walking out of here without some ninja bling.”

Kakashi rolled his eyes, but smiled at his comrade. Her blood was up and he felt his rising steadily along with it. Anko never gave him any shit about participating in the fighting festivals -- _she_ was the one stepping on faces to get to the top of the pole. And Kakashi admired that; that she was ruthless -- edging on vicious -- but also possessed with an inherent good nature, the kind that bloomed in a room, made you wanna tap your feet to it. Minato-sensei had the same sort of way about him. 

“Sorry, Kash,” she said, eyes focused down the range of floating targets. “You’re gonna have to buy your own way. I don’t want to split throws with you anymore.”

She chose three wooden knives from the pile and leapt over the table in parkour form, like a side-saddled leapfrog. The power in her movement sent a mini blast wave over the array of cheap prizes: some of the knives flipped over; the nearby rotating rack rattled faintly. “Where do I stand?”

Ajimi shuffled around the table end to take a seat at a stool on the opposite side of the larger tattooed man. His scarred head bobbed up and down. 

“Anywhere ya want, missy.” The vendor answered, leering like a split gourd. "You're a free agent."

“ _Excellent_ ,” Anko’s response was very faint. She turned her back on the table and crouched low inside the range, the knives held point-out between her knuckles, two and one in each hand, and in the next instant she exploded off the ground. 

In the shower of sawdust that followed, Kakashi tracked her progress. The tent wasn't very high -- maybe 10 or 15 feet -- but almost as soon as Anko jumped, he noticed, the floating targets entered a frenzy; they circled the kunoichi within the confines of the narrow tent, always facing inward and surprisingly nimble. She was clearly aiming for the smaller bullseyes and higher points, and the larger disks took advantage of this preference to sidle up close to her, mockingly easy targets.

Anko's first throw struck the second smallest disk in the bullseye -- like Kakashi, she had guessed that the wood face thinned in the center, and angled her throw to wedge more blade into the circle. Her second throw was aimed for the fifth target, but it clipped the edge of the largest, slow-moving first target and flew far off course. 

Anko doubled her speed around the targets now, making high, carefully timed leaps through the thick of them to study the way they scattered. She always landed in the shadow of a floating disk and launched again in an instant; to the untrained eye, the kunoichi was merely a flicker overhead. 

The girl on the hay bales had hardly moved, Kakashi noted. Just her foot, swinging, pendulum-like. Mask pointed to the sky like a _tengu_ gone cloud-gazing.

Anko fluttered point to point until her third throw seemed imminent. She needed at least 10 points to make the cut for a prize but was likely too prideful to settle for the largest disk. 

The smaller disks lurked in the back, swifter than the others, and more timid. Anko leapt -- she was aiming for the fourth again, and again the fatter targets blocked her way; she stowed her last blade between her teeth and caught the second disk in her hands, catapaulted over it, kicked off the third target and basically stabbed the fourth, dead center beside her first successful throw.

Anko hung from the small floating target with one hand, shit-eating grin on blast and visible from nine yards away. She dropped back to the sawdust when the disk began to spin petulantly. A flurry of clucking chickens welcomed her back to the ground. 

“Good show,” the vendor remarked. 

Anko jogged back, somersaulted over the table. The exhilaration put some color in her cheeks. “That was kind of fun. Cheap and rigged as it is.”

“Oy!”

“The wood is so thin in the centers, you have to hit them at impossible angles,” she gestured with both arms. “Or stab them like I did. The fifth target is basically a dead throw. But you can probably get to a hundo at _least_ , K. I know you could.”

“Will you do it?” she said, when he didn’t respond in the next breath. “Come on -- it’ll make you happy, and I can get something nicer from the rack. If _Guy_ were here he would definitely -- ”

“Fine,” said Kakashi. He’d made a sale today, anyway. Most of the loot was in a secret compartment of his shoe but he usually kept about 50 kools on him in more accessible places. Minus Anko’s sugar wand. And the tickets.

“I only have 30.” He realized. 

Anko rolled her eyes and slapped a 10-coin on the table. “There. We’re even.”

“Sure,” he hummed, and selected three carved blades from the line-up. Anko was already perusing the flashy flip-knives for her own prize when he edged around her to get into the range on the other side of the table. 

The shadow of Kakashi’s first throw was blocked, clipped, or otherwise redirected by each of four spinning targets -- but its physical form embedded itself firmly in the center of the smallest target. He heard Anko whoop and the vendor gurgle but he was already weaving in for his next throw. The _tengu_ girl’s foot stopped swinging. 

He remembered the beat, anyway, and when the second disk came flying at him edge-first like an attack, he spun over it and hid in the shadow of the passing fourth.

“Hey!” his companion was shouting. “Is she trying to knock him _out?_ ”

It was always good to have support on the sidelines, even when it was distracting and loud as Anko.

The fulcrum of Kakashi’s fighting style was accurately predicting his opponent’s movements; he saw so far ahead he could move _with_ them, on top of them, if he liked -- and that was even without the Sharingan. He saw an opening to the timid fifth target like the hairsbreadth moment of stillness after a contraction of the heart, just before the electric pulse forced it to jump. 

Kakashi’s second throw sunk itself beside the first; inside a bullseye so small it was completely obscured by the two angled blades. It would be impossible to try for a third. His last knife seemed slightly more balanced than the rest. There was a little leaf sticking out of the handle. 

The crow girl was on her feet, now, and when her arms shot out Kakashi felt the field pulse and the targets didn’t just spin saucer-like around him, now -- they hurtled through the air overhead, flipping over themselves as they whizzed by, not like docile targets but a bunch of impossible, coin-flipping _tools_ , or sore loser carnies who didn't know when to quit.

He feigned a throw at the fourth target and slapped the metal backing on the third one as it flipped by instead. His palm struck the metal over the paper tag and he sent a pulse of chakra into it. The electrons in the silver plates were loose and dancing with electricity. 

Luckily Kakashi knew a thing or two about electricity, being a handler himself; and he was aware of silver’s properties as a good conductor; he also knew that there were a number of ways to increase resistivity even in conductive metals. Trying to push electric current through a material with high resistivity would be like trying to force air through a blocked pipe; if he could shock the girl's current with his own, Kakashi theorized -- enough to overheat the metal, or interrupt her frequency -- he could stun the disks long enough to get a shot in. 

Kakashi alighted in a crouch on one of the hay bales in the center of the range, and waited for the next pause between the electric field’s oscillation cycles. When the _tengu_ finally noticed him, he made a calculated leap.

The magnetic field produced by running a current through a conductor always ran perpendicular to the electric field; it seemed like the targets were orbiting freely over their own artificial gravity, but they were actually bound by predictable rules. Kakashi spun in midair to avoid losing a kneecap to a disk lancing by like a flyby comet. The fifth target was flipping dumbly on the perimeter. When it became obvious he was gunning for it again, the disks changed formation and fell into an attack pattern. Kakashi caught one, immobilized it with a ripple of electricity from his palm, and brought it down to the ground -- he barrel-rolled and was up again, eye on the fifth target.

“It’s a dead throw!” Anko howled. 

Two disks arced toward him and Kakashi wasn’t playing around, anymore; he brought one of his heels down on one plate, introduced his elbow to the other, and sent them both to join their comrade in the sawdust. He caught the fourth disk in two hands as it carved through the air toward his face. Instead of sending it down to the others, he sent it curving back down the range with a discus throw that struck the hiding fifth target in its metal back-plate. He'd hidden his last blade in the frisbee's shadow, and the next time the smallest target flipped -- slowly, this time -- there was a third knife competing for the bullseye: embedded in the wooden butt of the first one. 

Anko cheered, the masked girl was silent, and Kakashi hit the ground, felt his skin prickle and purr -- it _had_ been pretty fun, rigged as it was. 

He was on his way back to the scoring table when the hair on the back of his neck rose and he ducked as one of the heavy metal targets flew by, flung outward when the whole electric field collapsed artlessly to the ground. 

“ _You -- !_ ” Anko growled. Kakashi tried to keep his companion from crawling over the table back into the range. She shook her fist at the _tengu_ child. “Get a headband, ya lousy stray!”

“Anko,” he said, mild. 

She was still glaring over the range, but ceased her efforts to fly across it. She pointed to her eyes with two fingers and jabbed them in the direction of the masked carnie.

“You got quite the eye, boy,” said the vendor. He crossed his arms over his thick chest. “What’s yer secret?”

Kakashi edged back around the table. “I, uh, aim for the middle.”

Anko laughed heartily. “Nice," she complimented. "Another brilliant lesson, Kakashi-sensei.”

“Never say that again.” He was going to draw the line on honorifics, forever, no exceptions. 

Ajimi’s head was still faintly bobbing when he stood from his stool and motioned them into the merchant side of the tent. Kakashi clasped his hands behind his neck and trailed along while Anko buzzed over the travelling performers’ unique display of weaponry. A lot of it seemed more on the ornamental side, but she pointed out some of the newer grip styles, a set of the armor-piercing throwing stars, and a stock of thin kevlar sheathes for stealthy concealment. She couldn' seem to decide between a pair of silver butterfly knives and a mean-looking tactical knife with a powder coated black blade. Kakashi thought the metalwork was okay but he didn’t really need anything new. 

“Pick whatever you want,” he said. 

“Really?” She shined. Then sobered. “No, I think you should get something. You put a lot of work into winning.”

“It was easy.”

Anko rolled her eyes. “You sure?” she pressed. “Obito doesn’t want a nice knife?”

Kakashi dropped his arms, blanched. “No. He’s… more of a, fists guy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Anko declared. “ _All_ shinobi appreciate nice knives. I always get a million of ‘em over the holidays. I hear civilians get each other socks.”

Kakashi settled his back against the sales counter to wait. After a while he turned away from the displays, toyed with some of the crescent-shaped wood shavings leftover from Ajimi’s last whittling project. He glanced behind the counter. The old man grinned at him. Kakashi swallowed uncomfortably. Some challengers had arrived on the activity side, and the roadies were busy resetting hay bales and ushering the chickens out of the range. He heard the tattooed vendor plunging into his same lines about the fine _knives_ , and the hot _metal_ work -- 

Silver winked at him underneath the glass counter. Not only was it supremely conductive, silver had the highest light reflectance of any element, which often made it cool to the touch. 

“In ancient times, people used metal to treat diseases,” came a voice with a hoarse, rust-like quality; like groaning timbers or an old iron bell. It was unexpected, coming from someone so slight of frame. It had been difficult to tell in the range, but the girl in the _tengu_ mask was only tall enough to maybe set her chin on the counter. “They believed the celestial bodies were responsible for leaving metals on earth. Iron was from Mars, copper from Venus. Silver came from the Moon.”

The man Ajimi moved his mouth like he had something to say, and the crow girl turned to face him, then looked back over the counter. Her eyes were dark pits. 

“When gold or copper is placed on the skin, an electric current travels from the metal to the body. With silver, the current flows the opposite direction: from the skin to the metal. It's supposed to balance the other elements in the body, calm nerves and cleanse the blood. People wear silver to -- ”

The girl paused abruptly, and the long-nosed mask whirled back around to the merchant. “But he doesn’t _need_ new skin, A _jimi_.”

The _tengu_ rotated back to him with a noise of exasperation. “Fine. Whatever. Ajimi says silver does important stuff for pain and healing and the formation of bones and skin, whatever that means. You should pick something and go away now.”

“You’re a brat,” hummed Kakashi. He brushed away some of the wood shavings from the glass surface and looked down at the offerings. Not all weapons, this time, but still in Anko’s category of ‘ninja bling’.

“You’re a _cheat_ er,” blustered Sayo. “You reversed my electric field!”

“Maa. I don’t know who you’re calling a cheater." He said lightly. "The technique was cute, but your execution was sloppy. The acoustics were neat, but having a rhythm in your fighting style makes it predictable; you left me a huge opening. _Three_ of them.”

The crow girl went rigid beak to boots and Kakashi could feel the little carnie stewing. “ _Not_ huge,” she retorted. 

“Understand your medium,” he advised. “And you won’t be so vulnerable to counterattack.” 

“Kakashi- _sen_ sei!” Anko cried, reeling back in from her scrutiny of all the tent’s wares. “You’re so busy this evening.”

“Oh,” she continued, hovering at his shoulder and jabbing a finger at the glass before he could respond. “I really like that. Is this what you want?”

“Uh -- ”

Ajimi was already unlocking the back, sliding open the door and pulling the stand from the case. It was a simple chain, but the links were bold and temptingly shiny, and Kakashi tested their weight over two fingers. 

“We found this on a shipwreck under the new moon," said the girl behind the counter. "It was sunk off the coast of the Ibaraki tidal flats -- never made it to the Mist.” 

“You guys _found_ it?” Anko pried. “Isn’t that a lucky thing, to just _find_ a bit of treasure like that.”

The mask’s long nose tipped up in the air. “Ajimi told me to say so!” she blustered. “We _aren’t_ looters. Anyway he shouldn’t be getting silver because he's already got way too much!” She turned to Kakashi and spat: "It doesn't go with you at all!"

“Don’t worry, feral thing. It’s not for him.” said Anko.

At this, the small _tengu_ peered carefully at the circlet of interlocking loops. Then: “That’s a boy’s necklace.”

Her shit-eating grin. “Everyone needs _some_ body to hold 'em down.”

Kakashi slipped the chain into his pocket, felt it puddle coldly against the outside of his leg. He nodded at the tongueless man and Ajimi smiled again, gaping hole on the left side.

“Aw,” said Anko, as they started to ease their way back toward the entrance. “He should be getting _you_ fancy things, everything you do for him.”

“Your mom’s a hoe,” he murmured. 

She laughed heartily. 

On their way out of the range, the mountainous vendor offered Anko a truss of autumn flora. _Flowers for the lady,_ he said in his awful voice.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obito went on a scary date with G so i thought it was only fair kakashi got one with anko
> 
> now i kind of want saburo and sayo to meet
> 
> banged out these next couple chapters in reverse  
> so the next update shouldn't take so long
> 
> work is hell


	12. interlude: akatsuki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a diddle before the next part  
> effin plot rabbits, mang  
> 

“Hey, look.” Obito gestured with a jerk of his chin, hands still sunk stubbornly in his pockets. “It’s that newspaper kid.”

Kakashi peered across the parkway, through the gaps in the surging crowd, and identified the vague outline of the Academy student they kept running into. It was… Seigo. No -- Seijiro? Damn. 

“Who’s he with?”

“Izumo,” Kakashi guessed. “And that other kid -- ”

“The one always on a damn sugar-high,” Obito confirmed, and his eye narrowed. “What are those little stains up to?”

Before Kakashi could calm or redirect his teammate, he was weaving his way purposefully across the limestone walk, passing through dueling currents of chattering civilians like they weren’t even there, like he was just sliding through them. Kakashi rolled his eyes and meandered through the thicket after him, idly wondering how much of his life he would spend chasing down this Uchiha.

“Saburo!” His roommate called out.

The three preteens were standing at the edge of the road, cramped between a water station and a busy food stall. Nearby, a man was expertly stretching noodles far into the street, much to the gathering crowd’s delight. Shadows cast by adult multitudes tended to swallow up the troubles of children. 

“What’s up?” Obito fired. He held out his fist to the newspaper kid and after a split second’s hesitation the boy tapped his knuckles against it. 

“Hey, Obito.” Kakashi found his gentle voice familiar, now. “I like your chain.”

“Thanks, man. K got it for me.” He examined the two genin across from him. “These your friends?”

“Err -- ” 

“What’s that behind your back?” Obito interrupted, narrowing his eye on one of the shuffling boys.

Neither of them responded and the silence stretched noodle-thin until finally the spikey-haired kid punched the other in the arm. “ _Izumo!_ ” he hissed. 

Izumo shot several furious eye signals at his companion.

“Kotetsu,” said Kakashi, feeling wildly tall in the small company. “Does your dad know about the kakigori?”

The young ninja rocked on his toes, clutching his bag of sugar and shaved ice to his chest. His eyes darted around like he was ready to bolt at any second. 

“Last time you ate that shit, you didn’t sleep for ten _days_ ,” he reminded him. “Pissed off your old man. Now you have to swallow a big pill every morning, isn’t that right?”

Kotetsu went very red across his nose. 

“So what?” Izumo demanded. “Screw off, skinny.”

On some unspoken cue, the kids split and darted in opposite directions. "Hey!" Obito barked -- intercepted Izumo, tugged on the knot in his headband and cuffed him soundly around the ears. Kakashi stuck out a leg and collared the other fleeing preteen as he stumbled over it, then snatched his fair candy and held it high over his head. 

Bullying used to be fun, but now Kakashi’s reputation as someone not to be fucked with was big -- too big. A big fucking buzzkill, sometimes. Nobody ever wanted to scrap, anymore. Whenever people around town bumped into him while he was reading, or something, they always imagined they’d offended him, somehow, and then made a huge scene begging not to be killed until Kakashi had to explain that he was flattered, but he really didn’t have time.

“Go on, fight me,” he heard his teammate growl as Izumo fought against his deadlock. “I’ve had flesh-wounds bigger than you, squirt.” 

Obito pried something from the young ninja’s grip. 

He had to admit -- Obito’s reputation was growing swiftly alongside his, purposely or not. And he could easily see it growing sideways, on his off-days. In possibly dangerous ways. 

Kakashi collected the perks of his reputation together with its pitfalls: he knew it made most nin his own age feel threatened and small; but his inner circle was nothing short of indestructible. He’d never had a curfew or paid a fine because the Military Police didn’t bother him; but that was probably also what made civilians think he was some kind of thug with special privileges. All the political bigwigs at FOB were either throwing rocks or hiding their fuckin’ hands; but Kakashi's working relationship with the Hokage and his involvement in the Third’s secret intelligence division made him hot stuff even outside the military hierarchy. If he saw a mission he liked, it found its way into his hands.

“Scram and I’ll let you keep your syrup.” Kakashi offered. Kotetsu nodded fervently. The kid hit the ground running, and his inseperable friend scrambled after him. They were extraordinarily _slip_ pery, for genin their age.

“Your friends suck,” Obito informed the newspaper kid, offering up his camera. "Those idiots made the list for exams, this year. Can you believe it? _Those_ two. Chunin."

Saburo took the device, smiled in a hopeless way. “They were just messing around.”

“Yeah, well. Ya can’t just let anyone do you like that, kiddo.” Obito stuck his hands back into his pockets. “You alone out here?” 

Kakashi allowed his Sharingan to flutter to life. He searched the stilted masses of fair-goers over the Academy student’s head.

“My mom’s on duty in the square.”

“Let’s get going, then.” Obito decided, and started to drift away, skirting the thronging crowd and eyeing them darkly all the way. “You don’t wanna hang around here, S-dot. Something’s in the water.”

This sentiment seemed to amuse Saburo and he giggled, catching up to the Uchiha and matching his stride at a trot. His teeth elbowed each other childishly for space.

“I got a shot of that dude,” the kid told him excitedly, waving an arm back at the busy food stall. “Banging out noodles like _jump_ -ropes. And then a bunch of MPs went rolling by, in uniform.”

“Shady fuckin’ town.” Obito muttered. “What’s with all this security?”

Kakashi followed after the odd pair, stretched his hands behind his neck and continued to survey the thronging people, wondering the same thing. 

“I couldn’t even get into the _bog_ without some dick in uniform searching my pockets.” His teammate grumbled. “As if anyone’s really itching to shank a guy squatting over the public pile.”

“That’s because there was a kidnapping in one of the restrooms around here, a couple years ago,” said Saburo. "Remember?"

"No," Obito said bluntly.

Saburo stopped short. "Oh, right. Sorry. Well, a couple years ago, some guy stole a bunch of medicine from a drug store. Not just cough syrup, either -- the expensive traditional stuff: powdered scales of some kind. The Military Police had him cornered, so he took a woman hostage and holed up in the bog.”

“Desperate,” commented Kakashi.

“Disgusting,” said his teammate. “What happened?”

“He let her go, made a run for it -- ” said the young journalist. “But I guess he'd racked up some debt with a local gang, trying to pay for his mother's medicine. They caught up to him first, and killed him.”

“Kind of fishy.”

“This shady fuckin’ town.” Obito shook his head at the ground. 

“Obito -- ” Saburo said suddenly. “Watch out for that demon scroll.”

“Nah, bro," he snorted, belligerent. "Demon scrolls watch out for _me_ \-- ” All it took was an unforeseen gust of autumn wind to send a ripple through a long scroll hanging from the trees, midway between a pair of roadside torches; Obito’s ninja instinct momentarily abandoned him and Kakashi witnessed the Uchiha slapped unpleasantly by the festive decor. “ _Unh!_ What the fuck?”

“ _Demon scrolls watch out for me_.” He mocked.

“Ugh, shut up -- fool!” Obito growled, batting away the heavy material. “The fuck is this thing doing here, anyway? It's a thirty foot long fire hazard.”

“It's telling a story.” Saburo answered readily.

“Huh?”

“It’s a legend of the sun god Amaterasu,” he clarified, eyes turned up at the long swinging tapestry. The funny thing about demon scrolls was they appeared almost anywhere, always around the same time every autumn, but you never saw anyone hanging them. “This one’s about the first dawn.” 

Obito frowned suspiciously at the faintly rippling artifact. “I can’t read any of those squiggles. And the paintings don’t make any sense -- what’s that black spot at the top?”

“They say Amaterasu was born when Nagi cleansed the darkness from his left eye,” Saburo explained patiently. “She feuded constantly with the storm god Susanoo, who was also her brother.”

“Okay-y,” he squinted. “So what’s with the horse?”

“One day, Susanoo left a pony flayed in the entrance of her home. Horses are sacred to the sun god, and Amaterasu fled from her brother’s wickedness. No one could coax her out of hiding, and the world was plunged into unending darkness.”

Saburo pointed up at the belly of the scroll, where an illustration of black smoke coiled out to the borders, engulfing the Old World like the spirals inside a great iris.

“What are all those blue-green things?”

“Demons.” He answered. “Legend says imps and foul women were sent from the Underworld to taunt the sun god and keep her in a depressed state. They told her lies about the state of things -- until she believed she was someone else.”

“Those fuckers. How did she get out?”

“She heard laughter,” said Saburo. “From the outside. And when she poked her head out of the cave, Amaterasu saw herself in a mirror and was amazed by her own reflection. That was the very first dawn.”

Obito stood with the story for a few moments, his mouth set in an indecisive line. Then he pointed to a ring of markings at the bottom of the scroll. “Look, K. These look kinda like Sharingan.”

Kakashi hummed. He thought of taking a big breath behind his teammate's ear.

“It’s, uh, Magatama.” Saburo volunteered himself again, paused to look around at the jōnin, seeming a little flummoxed -- by the upperclassmen’s attention or by their ignorance, Kakashi didn’t know which. Torches lined his teammate in hellfire and the scroll seemed to whisper its eerie folklore against a symphony of black leaves. "It's the necklace Amaterasu passed on to her descendants." said the kid. "She asked them to rule over the land and plant rice, and gave them three treasures: a bronze mirror, the Magatama, and the sword of Kusanagi, which was concealed in the tail of the serpent Orochi.”

“She should’ve just sent it in the mail." said Obito, inconsolable. "All these stories are the same. Miserable and violent.”

“It’s not so bad,” said Saburo. “What would the world be, without monsters?”

His roommate's hands emerged, settled at his hips, then behind his head. He squinted. “Dude. Monsters kept Ammy hustled into a _cave_.”

“But if she hadn’t overcome them, there would be no dawn; we wouldn’t know day or night -- strength, suffering, or relief. The story teaches us life is cyclical, yet permanent: the sun will rise and fall just as surely as the rice will come to harvest each year, and we owe it to Amaterasu _and_ her demons. Without them, there isn't any such thing as peace or balance, no _yin_ or _yang_.” 

“Wow, you’re -- really into this shit.” Obito decided. Kakashi snorted.

“Err... I just, thought it was a cool story.” The kid stuttered, abruptly turned, and began to force-march himself away from the hanging decoration. 

Kakashi lingered while his roommate took one last look at the demon scroll. When he looked ready to turn away, he tweaked his ear, for no real reason except to provoke his hands from his pockets, or maybe make him look at him. Predictably, Obito lashed out -- first with an elbow, which missed -- then he managed to fist his hand in his hood and haul him close, but only because Kakashi allowed him to.

“Are you from the Underworld?” His roommate murmured.

Kakashi huffed a startled laugh. “Obito. You are _not_ the sun god in this scenario.”

“Why not?”

He rolled his eyes. “ _You_ saw the last issue of _Ōkami_. Amaterasu's a babe.”

“So?" Obito scowled, shook him. "What -- you think _you_ are?”

Kakashi grinned under his mask. His teammate uttered a noise of frustration and released him, setting off at a trudge after their young companion.

They spent a few moments in relative silence as the excited crowds grew, then Saburo addressed the moody Uchiha. “So, um, how’s your dirt?”

Obito blanched. “Oh, it’s, you know -- dirt.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and it actually sounded like he meant it. “I was thinking, though. Your flowers don’t appear just _any_ where you go, right? Like, you don’t see them around campus, or here in the park, do you?”

He shook his head. 

“I was thinking; maybe it only happens in places you train because it’s a reaction to your chakra. I mean, maybe it has something to do with your energy.”

“Oh,” said Obito, and some of his gloom lifted. “I didn’t think of that. But yeah, maybe -- I’ll try it.”

Kakashi tried not to laugh at the boy's sincere interest in his roommate’s screwy experiment. He hadn’t spared it much thought, himself; he was more focused on the fact that his teammate refused to even _train_ with him --

“Um, Kakashi?”

He glanced down at the kid, nonplussed. 

“I’ve been thinking about that question you asked, and that metaphor thing,” he said, and Kakashi tried to remember what the deuce he was talking about. “About the mind, the shoreline -- and the color blue. And I’ve decided, consciousness is a function of corporeality and temporality -- ”

Obito grunted his confusion. 

“I mean, all consciousness means, really,” Saburo went on. “Is inhabiting a body over time. So you can be a _con_ scious thing, without ever necessarily making contact with reality, or ever looking for the shore. But to be a _living_ thing comes with experience, truth, and growth. I thought about it, and I agree with you -- I think if you wanted to truly experience life, you'd have to step outside your own vessel. You _have_ to lose your mind.”

Kakashi smiled, amused. He still didn't remember what the fuck he was talking about. Obito hoisted the journalist nin into a playful headlock. “You’re a nut, too.” He concluded. 

The kid chuckled nervously, pulled at the jōnin’s arm. “Uh, thanks, Obito.”

“You can call me B. Nobody walks through all those syllables, anymore.”

He struggled politely. “I, see.” 

“The _Hidden Leaf_ has been trash lately.” Kakashi remembered. “I’ve seen four articles about _Panda_ Pop in the last three weeks, and a bunch of lame shit about leaf peeping and _flower_ viewing. Nobody’s saying anything about the huge construction project around Hokutō district; we don't need another wall -- especially not _in_ side the city -- ”

“And the bats!” Obito interrupted. “Hasn’t anybody noticed the bats are dying?”

"Ma-a," Kakahi scoffed. "That’s because their new drummer couldn’t tell taiko from den-den _daiko_ \-- ”

“I’m not talking about the dumb band!" He said, incensed. "Stop trying to piss me off!”

“I don’t know what’s been going on with the press.” Saburo extricated himself from Obito’s loosened grip, and sighed like a much older soul. His shoulders fell. “I, uh, don’t write for the _Hidden Leaf_ anymore, actually.” 

“Oh?” Kakashi blinked. “What happened?”

“I got fired.” He sulked, then backtracked: “Well -- they said it was time for me to pursue 'other' career options.”

“That’s bullshit,” Obito bayed supportively. “If you wanna do it, you should be able to do it. No matter what the fuckers think.”

Saburo left his camera untended around his neck and groped for his bag while they ambled along the torchlit walk. Eventually he tugged free a rolled-up packet of paper and offered it up to them. Kakashi took it first, and unfolded the front page. It was a newspaper.

As he perused the headlines on the unfamiliar rag, his roommate arrived heavily over his shoulder and read obnoxiously aloud. “ _The Watertower_ ,” he said. “Nice.”

“I, uh, decided to self-publish.” Saburo explained, abashed, then his chest swelled with small pride. “I realized the _Hidden Leaf_ ’s best pieces were all my worst ideas.”

“Good for you, kid.”

“Yo!” Obito crowed suddenly, flicking whole-handed at the photograph on the front page. “I know that place -- that’s the shithouse! That’s the shithouse at the top of our block.” 

“I’ve been mapping the city sanitation system,” said Saburo. He took a deep breath. “Did you know, in the lower ring, the waiting period to see a medic nin is sometimes _years_ long? People from low-town districts are _three_ times more likely to die from curable diseases, and complications of childbirth, and I just found out -- ”

“Young blood,” Kakashi hummed, scanning the article under the dim festival lights. “Be careful with this stuff.”

“I know,” he said, sobering quickly. “But it’s okay. Distribution sucks. Only ten people in the whole city have a copy, probably.”

“Good. Mind if I keep this one?”

He shrugged. “It’s yours.”

The square was flooded with people. Milling spectators congested the natural flow of traffic, gathered thick and careless around street performers and large dancing circles; activity tents and taverns spilled creamy light over the polished limestone; guests of the grand Green Lake teahouse dotted the moonlit garden terraces inside and outside the main building, from the ground floor all the way to the smoke-wreathed fifth. 

The magnitude of the square's activities always drew more attention to the center of the park, and hawkers took advantage of the extra foot-traffic to ensnare unsuspecting customers; mazelike corridors of temporary stalls selling Fire Country curios had cropped up overnight along the fringes of the square, channeling the crowds through endless turns of shoulder-to-shoulder stalls selling seals, scrolls, flutes and gourds -- songbirds packed into cages, inane keychains with winking animal faces, hookah rigs and massive water-pipes carved from maple, cherry, and elm.

Not long after reaching the wellspring of holiday commotion, Obito abandoned their quest, dodged around the hawkers’ trips and traps, and sauntered up on an innocuous food stall at the edge of the chaos. Saburo took one look across the flooded square and followed after the Uchiha. 

The vendor was selling _chimaki_ , a kind of sweet rice cooked inside ten-inch stalks of bamboo. It more commonly came wrapped in leaves, but Obito liked to bang open the sticks. 

He was visibly flustered when the vendor asked if he wanted white or black.

“It comes in black?” 

Konoha had not begun trading with communities in the eastern mountains until a few years ago; Obito had never seen forbidden rice, Kakashi realized. 

“Try it.” He elbowed into his side. “I got you.”

“I don’t need your drug money, _Kash_ ,” he sniffed, the impossible twit. “I took a D-rank today.”

“Chasing cats, again?”

“ _No_ \-- the old lady upstairs locked herself out, so I helped her break the door.”

“Much more heroic,” Kakashi hummed.

“Why didn’t you just find a locksmith?” said Saburo. 

“She didn’t have time for a _lock_ smith, man," he insisted. "Old people tai-chi starts up in the park _first_ thing in the morning. Gran-gran was mad late. It was the only way.”

“She _paid_ you to break into her apartment?”

“Old people really like him.” Kakashi chuckled. 

His roommate’s expression darkened suddenly. “There were all these dead bats outside her windows, dude. Like they just got tired out there, or something. I keep seeing them -- ” 

“Stop thinking about it,” Kakashi elbowed him again. “Just pick a stick. They put mangos in the black kind.”

Obito considered the array of bamboo stalks at the stall again, wide-eyed. “Man-gos?”

Kakashi covered his eyes with one hand. Of course he wouldn’t know what a damn _mango_ was. 

“That’s right,” he heard Saburo say, quiet. “We weren’t on trading terms with Tanigakure until pretty recently.”

“There’s lots of cool stuff you can try now, B,” the kid continued, lifting his voice. “There’s mango ice cream, and cake made from wheat, and doboroku milk sake...”

“Dobo...roku?” Obito brightened from his visible wilt. “Yeah, you're right. I guess I never thought about it before. I gotta catch up on food.”

The kid was a fucking Uchiha _whisperer_ \-- Kakashi needed it, whatever Saburo had that made it so easy to talk his roommate down. 

Obito paid the vendor with his measly old lady allowance and split his bamboo down the center with both thumbs. 

“It’s kind of… purple.” He assessed the fruit-flecked sticky rice inside, wearing a stupid face like he was disturbed, somehow. By _rice_.

“Stop staring at it and eat it.”

“I will!” Obito leveled him with a surly glare. “Don’t laugh, I -- didn’t think rice could be purple. And these other things are so orange and slimy-looking.”

“It’s _fruit_. Raidō brought mangos over, once. Don’t you remember? When he came to cards that time with Ebisu and Guy.” 

Raidō always made an effort to be a respectable guest. Unlike the rest of them.

“Those red and green things? I thought they were some kind of potato.”

The newspaper kid stifled a laugh at his elbow. Kakashi tipped his eyes to the sky and huffed his annoyance. He hadn’t even had anything to smoke yet, today, but he was gong to need it to make it through an evening juggling his roommate. 

Obito paused with the open stalk lifted halfway to his mouth. “K? What’s wrong with you?” 

Kakashi’s back straightened, his heels slid together -- he couldn’t help it. In Hatake culture, you bow to greet your mother.

Saburo covered his eyes with both hands and groaned.

A white mask seemed to materialize from the crowds’ writhing shadows -- the face of a downbeat lioness with a smiling mouth and a narrow, satisfied gaze. Even if he didn’t remember the mask or her dark crowning afro Kakashi would never forget the wicked curved blades cross-sashed at her waist. Or the way her height made him feel half-grown. 

“Evening, men,” came her guileless greeting. “At ease.”

“Oishi-senpai.” Kakashi lifted his gaze and saluted anyway.

“O-i-shi?” murmured Obito. “That’s a boy’s name.”

Kakashi knuckled his teammate hard in the ribs. “No it’s not!” he hissed.

“None of that,” said the ANBU officer. She greeted Kakashi with a hand on the side of his face, and a trickle of amber laughter. “It’s been a while, baby. Look how tall you are.”

Saburo was scowling. “Mom -- ”

“I remember when you first joined Special Ops.” She leaned back and stood one hand on her hip, turned a deaf ear on her son’s complaints. “We had to order a uniform specially made -- you were too small for anything we had on hand.”

Kakashi felt his roommate smirking at him, and his neck burned. He stared straight ahead.

“And you must be Obito.”

When the mask’s empty gaze alighted on him, the Uchiha swallowed, didn’t stand attention or anything but he went very still and nodded like he had something to hide. 

“Cute,” the officer decided. “You can call me Oishi. It gives the folks at FOB a lot of hope, you know -- to see you up and walking around. You boys are racking up some impressive numbers.”

Obito looked down at his feet, then back up. “Hope?”

“Sure,” she said, and the word sang with certainty. “Feel that energy in the air?” 

A deep inhale rang loudly from behind the lion’s face. Oishi leaned down again, and her voice fell to a conspiratorial husk. “A great poet once said, Autumn is a bloodbath. Do you hear it? The sound of a field before it burns?”

“Mom,” said Saburo curtly. “Nobody says stuff like that.”

She shrugged languidly. “The seasons are changing, my love -- even nature wars with itself. Violence is as natural as the birds and the bees.”

It was a bad time for ANBU to show up and start talking in fucking code, and Kakashi scrambled for a way to politely distract his former comrade and mentor. “Oishi -- ” He started.

Obito clapped back first. “What’re you talking about?”

The lioness cocked her head to the side. There wasn’t any discreet way for Kakashi to explain to her that he hadn’t told his teammate _any_ thing -- about what was behind them, much less what lay ahead -- he panicked and snatched at Obito's hand, subdued his complaints with a crushing grip.

Lantern-light silhouetted the masked shinobi in a peachy mist. “I see,” she said, finally. 

The Special Ops officer hovered in low again, and rooted the jōnin with a hand on each of their outside shoulders. “There’s nothing I like to see more,” she mused. “Than a couple of lost boys finding their way home.”

Obito's nostrils flared. Oishi leaned back to her full height. “Enjoying the fair?”

Kakashi withdrew his hand and covered his guilty ass with nonchalance. “Security looks tight, this year,” he said. “I thought you were on leave.”

“Oh, you know Hiruzen,” the lioness responded, lofty, like it wasn’t any big deal to call the Hokage by his given name. “One of his advisors spins a rain-stick and the man rethinks a month's worth of planning -- he put the order in for some extra bodies tonight, and I drew the short straw.”

“Kind of redundant, though, isn’t it?” said Obito. “With all the MPs parading around.” 

She hummed approvingly. “Let’s hope. You boys haven’t seen anything odd, have you?”

Kakashi shook his head.

“Like what?” Prickly and guarded as he’d grown to be, Obito was still relentlessly inquisitive. "It's just been the usual shady shit.”

"That's alright, then." Finally the officer addressed her son, hooking him with a hand over his neck and shoulder. “Saburo. Not looking for trouble again, are you?”

He denied it. Kakashi got the feeling trouble simply found him. 

“Don’t worry about the _Hidden Leaf_ , baby. They don’t know what they’re missing. The city has other newspapers, and plenty of editors would love to publish your work, I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“I won’t kiss you in front of your friends.”

“ _Mom!_ ” He protested. “Saying that makes it worse!”

The mask swiveled back to the jōnin. Oishi planted her hands back over her hips. “Time to get back to it -- but I want both of you over for dinner, one of these days, got it? No excuses!”

In the next instant the ANBU officer had dematerialized and Kakashi blinked away the image of the smiling cat. Three exhales broke the following hush. 

“That was your _mom?_ ” Obito accused. 

Saburo shrugged. “At least, that’s what everyone’s telling me.”

“She proctored my ANBU exams.” said Kakashi. “We were in the same division for a while.”

“Really?”

“Yeah -- Oishi’s the one who helped me break that nightjar code.”

“She's mostly doing cryptology stuff like that, now,” said Saburo. “It lets her stay in the city. Keep an _eye_ on me. It's awful.”

“Holy shit. You didn’t tell your spooky _ANBU_ mom that you smoked pot with me, did you?”

“You smoked up a _thirteen_ -year-old?” said Kakashi, unimpressed.

"Sort of? I mean -- " Obito clutched his bamboo snack stick in both hands. “That’s not that bad, is it?”

“You tell me. Did you see those blades on her belt?”

“Guys -- ” Saburo interrupted, expression grim. “It’s not just the saber claws you wanna watch out for -- _dodge_ that dinner invite. Trust me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> replanting this here:
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 
> 
> p.s. chapter tunes coming soon~  
> it's taken longer than i thought to organize the playlists -- trying to hit that point where they're compelling and relevant to the writing and shit but not too distracting 


	13. holidays pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> waddup slime
> 
> gota surprise snow day from work, so here ya go

  


[holidays pt. 3](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/holidays-pt-3?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

Green Lake Park’s main roads channeled visitors from the four cardinal gates to the center square, but a maze of smaller hidden paths and stilted walkways branched off the main drag to minor features on the water -- the floating gardens, the pedal-boat area, the bamboo island grove, and the bog, among other things. 

Kakashi tried to avoid the lame stuff, but then Obito spent almost an hour on the moonlit garden walks, feeding the spoiled lake fish next to three- and five- and seven-year-olds.

Some of the older koi fish were very scarred; their fins were shredded from battle, and some were missing eyes. It was a sort of surreal experience, watching his old teammate flick bits of lettuce at his myriad reflections under the full moon. After a while Kakashi left him to it, and moved a quiet distance away to wait in the shadow of one of the arched walking bridges. He was motionless there in the wet grass for so long, a stray emerged from under the bridge and settled down near his foot -- a moon-gray cat with muddied paws and curled whiskers. It pointedly ignored him for a while, then rotated its head and seemed to squint both eyes.

“I have nothing to eat,” Kakashi warned. It eyed him in a way that said _he_ was the one looking for food and a home.

The fish seemed to really like Obito. After a while even the children were swarming around him, jostling each other along the narrow gangway to get closer to the undulating cloud of koi and smaller lamp-eyed killifish gathering at the Uchiha’s feet. 

Most of the time love ached but sometimes you could just sit with it, like a hangnail, or a scratchy sweater. Trees bloomed, a faraway wind howled; petals fell from the mountains onto great shinobi compounds and suburban terrace housing -- and Kakashi sat cramped inside the shadow of an aged, illogical yearning. 

The only lesson he'd failed at the Academy was understanding fear. Kakashi knew it now, intimately; he’d seen every shade of it in his enemies, friends, and victims. He remembered it in Rin. True fear only struck in the moment a threat was realized, but stress could be harnessed; paranoia could be wielded. Kakashi controlled his fear, used it to burn his rivals and his idols -- stick his feet on the throne and use the flames to get higher.

The eyes of the killifish were said to bring happiness. 

He looked sideways at the cat. “Is that true?”

The stray held his gaze for a long moment before abruptly lifting its hind leg and beginning to lick its ass in long, gurgling strokes. Kakashi decided this animal had already looked into the eyes of the killifish; this was the image of true happiness. 

Finally Obito peeled away from the crowd, sunk his hands in his pockets and seemed to pick his way blindly across the garden walks, around the arched bridge, over the cool grass. Kind of the same way Kakashi had been picking his way blindly over to his teammate since the day he woke up. He felt his skin prickle, and purr. 

“Let’s go,” Obito grumpled. “I’m all out of lettuce. And I’m pretty sure one of those little fuckers wiped their nose on my leg.” 

Some of his gruffness faded with amusement. “What’s with the cat?”

The moon-gray stray stared wide-eyed at the Uchiha, and its leg fell slowly from behind its head. Before their next breath it had leapt to its paws and scrambled back under the bridge, ears flat on its head.

“That was the best company I’ve had all night.” Kakashi mused, only half-joking. 

He scowled. “So go chase it, then.”

Kakashi stood and stretched his arms behind his head, paying the sullen suggestion little mind. He would leave chasing pussy to the rest of the adolescent population, thanks -- even if Obito planned to avoid his eye all night.

“I used to feed the fish around here all the time when I was a kid. I still recognize some of them.”

“Yeah?” Kakashi hummed, circled to his right side. “See anything else down there?”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. They started back along the raised gangway, and Obito evaded the clustering children by leaping the walking bridge and slipping behind the vendor selling popcorn and fish-feed. He hesitated, then crossed the threshold back into the main park.

“There aren’t usually this many people here.” They passed a stall selling infant turtles inside hanging plastic spheres. Obito frowned hard at it. “It’s hard to focus. Everyone’s touching me.”

“Ever think -- you have a personal bubble a mile wide?”

“Ah, fuck,” he lifted the scarred side of his mouth in a sneer and the effect was near fatal throat-tightening. “Bitch to me about it right now, will ya?”

Kakashi shrugged to buy time. Then: “If you want.”

“Nah, forget it." His near hand flipped out of his pocket, murderous, but his eye stayed fixed on the path before them. “I’ve memorized the words, already. O _bi_ to -- let people in and they might like you; step outta your box, Obito, it’s starting to smell; you talk shit because you eat shit, Obito; _Ma-a_ , _Bun_ zo-sensei has a shorter stick up his ass -- _fuck._ I’ve heard it all; I get it, I’m over it. You get over it!”

“Alright, I’m over it.” Kakashi caught the hand before it could flee back to its pocket. He slid a few fingers into the crevices between his knuckles and passed the following moment of silence with his gaze turned on the distant bamboo grove across the water. Obito’s skin burned but not in a clammy way. At least, not at first. 

There was a pugil fight arena set up in the bamboo grove. Kakashi wouldn’t mind knocking a few people off their pedestals tonight. He and Might Guy used to go all night at the damn pugil arena; it was the only thing he went to the fair to do, really -- but once Kakashi made ANBU, and the gang went from a bunch of roughhousing chunin to a handful of very dangerous jōnin, it seemed in poor taste to continue participating in the civilians’ scrappy funfair activities, amusing though they were. 

Pugil sticks were basically _bo_ staffs with both ends wrapped in heavy padding. The one-on-one matches took place on pedestals positioned a little over five feet apart and elevated 10 feet in the air. The goal was to knock your opponent down to the mats without losing balance yourself. After a couple drinks, this was just challenging enough to be good fun even for a couple of elite jōnin. 

“Did you know Anko was allergic to fire lilies?”

Kakashi hummed. He certainly had. That didn’t explain why his teammate had avoided looking at him all night, though. 

“It was nice to see Genma under someone else’s foot, for a change. You, uh,” Obito’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t seem mad. _Not yet,_ Kakashi thought. Just flustered, maybe. “You ruined their whole date, probably.”

Kakashi lifted his free hand to the back of his neck. He didn’t feel that bad about it. ”They’ve only known each other since before it was sexy to take baths together -- how could he forget?”

“Hm,” he mumbled. “She was really mad. Why’d ya do it?”

“He was annoying me.”

“ _When?_ ”

“You were there.”

“You mean -- ” His dark eyebrows drew inward. “When he was bugging us at cram? I didn’t even think you were mad that day. You gave him a deal on weed and everything.” 

He quieted as they passed a more excited corner of the parkway. While Kakashi considered whether it would be wise to explain himself or stick with silence, the sound of beating drums and bleating crowds reached a muddy crescendo. Night fell in slick rivers over the polished limestone pathways, tiding darkly around golden archipelagos of light cast by harvest torches and lanterns. Food stalls leaked mixed fragrances of laughter, life and frying oil. 

Two fine-comb rows of ginkgo leaned over a sidestreet branching off the main walk. The crowds died down when they entered the trees’ tall teetering shadows. A patchy sheet of fallen leaves wittered softly underfoot. 

Obito finally finished his thought. “You play the _long_ game.”

Kakashi almost laughed. He had no idea. “I gave him a couple days to make it up to me. He didn’t.” 

He snuck a third finger into Obito’s loose clasp. “You spend all day on the black courts again?”

He nodded, and something of the guilty expression from earlier in the evening returned to twist and dampen his features. His fingers twitched. “I’m sorry, man.”

Kakashi tossed his head at the strange admission. “What-for? Hiding any open wounds?”

“No, I mean -- ” Obito looked out at the trees in the opposite direction. “It just feels like, I always turn up, looking, really gross.”

“I don’t give a shit about that.” 

Double-vision and the familiar sensation of shuffling lenses accompanied the activation of the Sharingan. Kakashi nudged up the band covering his eye, and in a few turns his hypervigilance slid snugly into place. He released his teammate’s hand and moved to a more familiar grip at the nape of his neck instead. They weren’t _to_ tally different heights, but they were different heights -- and the hand-holding thing just wasn’t going to work out unless Obito put some effort into it. 

The silver was still cool to the touch. 

Even if the Uchiha didn’t look delicious in a black shirt and a chain, Kakashi still wouldn’t give a shit. Exactly one year ago, not only had he not attended the Goose Fair, he’d done his level best to avoid it -- and anyone who went looking to drag him there. Then he spent the evening with a handle of imported small-batch fire whisky and passed out draped over three uncomfortable chairs at the hospital. At the time, it didn’t seem like his teammate would ever wake up. Let alone in a couple of days.

Holidays had the malicious side-effect of reminding him of the things he’d lost, and of the things other people had, that he never would. And every year since understanding fear, Kakashi would remind himself that this came with the territory: dead family, dead friends, gruesome injury, harrowing missions and stifling secrecy -- they had all been prepared for this, way back in their Academy days. _This is what it means to be shinobi_ , Kakashi would think, watching tubes pump air into Obito’s chest.

He never imagined he could be so young and already feel so emptied. Kakashi knew the risks from the start -- but what happened to Minato’s team was _wack_ and for a long time he was so confused by fate’s cruel turns he barely understood the support and friendship offered by his comrades. And how could he accept it, with one of his eyes always stuck in that hospital ward -- stuck, stuck there reminding him.

Kakashi never even thought he’d be back at the damn Goose Fair, let alone kind of enjoying himself. He didn’t know whether to blame dramatics or hormones, but he didn’t have to fake it, anymore; happiness didn’t take so much effort next to Obito -- it didn’t matter if it took him a hundred boring fish ponds to loosen up. 

“Who gave you the flowers?”

Kakashi lifted his hand to the tiny truss of autumn flora behind his ear -- a few pale clusters of lavender and valerian, one long tail of bush clover -- he’d almost forgot about it. 

“One of the vendors gave them to Anko,” he answered. “But she got offended and said something about gender typecasting, so I took them instead. Want one?”

“N-no -- “ He rushed. “They, uh, look better on you.”

When Kakashi flicked his gaze sideways, he saw he finally had his teammate’s full attention, and grinned under his mask. Obito cracked a shy half-smile he hadn’t seen since they were kids and the Uchiha was forever tripping after Rin with moons in his eyes. It was another surreal feeling, somehow, looking into his teammate’s remaining black eye through its separated partner, and he wished for the millionth time that the world had not chewed him up the way it had, but -- 

At least -- it had spat him back out again, and for that he was thankful. 

He knew Obito hated it but Kakashi slid his arm over his shoulders anyway just to close the distance. “If I kiss you in public. Will your clan disown you?”

His eye rolled, and the half-smile didn’t widen but it heightened and for a second Obito bared his teeth roguishly. _Trippy,_ Kakashi thought, feeling hazy and agreeable. He didn’t mind dropping his guard for that -- he didn’t mind tripping all over himself for it. “Bakashi. You don’t know anything about Uchihas, do you?”

He blinked, squinted through a clearing in the fog. “Huh -- ?”

“ _Sat_ suma!” Obito said suddenly, in a very pleased growl, and veered off toward an outcropping of food stalls along the rim of the quiet chess patio. Kakashi dug holes in his pockets and followed, idly imagining the days when _his_ name would fall through his teammate’s teeth with the same passion as deep fried sweet potato sticks.

The vendor was selling all the local favorites: _satsuma_ ; and a type of fried sticky rice ball called _agemochi_ ; roasted chestnuts and ginkgo seeds; and sugary grilled corn tempura called _dakekimi_. The smell of it all sizzling in soybean shortening was enough to make the healthiest health nut’s mouth water. Obito turned to face him, single eye wide, wearing the most solemn, no-bullshit expression he’d seen all night. 

“Dude,” he said. A smile bit at Kakashi’s lips. “Can I use the card? Did you get the rest of my points redeemed at Mission Control?”

“Mhm,” Kakashi confirmed. Even though he certainly hadn’t. 

“Seriously? See -- ” His eyebrows rose black and spirited and Obito gestured to himself with his thumb. “ _I_ go down to FOB, and get nothing but attitude; _you_ go down there, and everyone rolls over.”

When his roommate finished thieving oxygen and actually turned to order, Kakashi shrugged their card from his pocket. Electronic payments were a relatively new convenience in Konoha; training points were fairly fluid and easily traded within the city walls, but not worth much outside of them, so hawkers and smaller vendors from out of town couldn’t accept point transfers from the village shinobi -- but most of the nation’s capital was well wired. 

Kakashi decided to handle his and Obito’s accounts jointly because it was much simpler that way; he and his roommate were the same in that neither one of them _need_ ed taking care of, but they were shitty about certain things the other made up for. Like, a year ago Kakashi was perfectly content with ration pills for meals, full-bodied training hikes and long poisonous nights for fun -- but one of the first things Obito did after they met up the first time was go fucking nuts over plain old _satsuma_. Made some street vendor’s lousy day. And after that, Kakashi started to actually spend time in his apartment; B was such a fucking shut-in, at first. He’d moved in with an electric kettle, a handful of laundry pins, and a chipped bowl from his old place, and before long he started asking why didn’t they have a table, or a couch, or any house slippers. Kakashi had forgotten the simple pleasures of living -- the thoughtless self-gratification of food and laziness. Obito taught him that self-neglect was just another form of selfishness. 

After the Kannabi Bridge incident, Kakashi relaxed, and closed off. But after Obito woke up, he actually fuckin’ re _laxed_. Haters tried to shame him for falling off the ANBU grindstone but Kakashi was still the most bad-ass ninja he knew and fuck it all anyway if he was happy. He’d rather come home to his roommate crying over a pot of dirt than to an empty box and a bottle of self-hatred. 

Obito was still getting the hang of Konoha’s electronic funds market, so at the end of each week, Kakashi collected their training logs and redeemed points at Mission Control for the both of them. 30 hours of training a week earned a shinobi around 300 cashable points deposited directly into their account; the two of them could amass close to a thousand points in a week without taking missions -- and that was with Kakashi cutting down Obito’s contribution significantly. 

He just didn’t think FOB needed to know how much his partner was training. 

It wasn’t deception, Kakashi thought, or deliberate concealment. He was just careless. Both of them forgot to punch in to training grounds sometimes, or forgot to take their tickets home. And sometimes only half of Obito’s training hours made it into the system -- _oops_. Better for him to appear to be taking it easy than to risk having someone Kakashi couldn’t speak about from an organization that didn’t exist perceive his teammate as a threat to the village. They were just lucky old man Sarutobi found some humor in Obito’s destructive tantrums; the Ten-Trees Tobi thing had _not_ been good for their image. 

Nobody cared that Obito could spend hours in the park feeding the goddamn _fish_ \-- all they cared about was his temper, and his _back_ story, and his, fucking, family name -- 

Anyway. They could squeeze by without the money, for now. 

After a few orders of _satsuma_ and a paper sleigh of grilled corn, Obito brightened visibly. The only nice thing about his teammate’s snappish moods was how quickly his spirits could be lifted by something simple as food. It could also be a real pain in the ass. There was a particular woman who came down from the high mountains to Wood Row each day, just until the sun rose; she sold fresh blueberries wrapped in white cloth and warm yak’s milk spiced with cinnamon and cardamom ladled from an iron kettle -- sometimes she also brought the yak. And if Obito didn’t see this woman first thing in the morning, he was the worst kind of _hands-off_ prickly till lunch. 

A nearby tent was selling salt-grilled sweetfish, bright red squid stewed in soy sauce, and _takoyaki_ in a variety of flavors. They were going to meet up with the others for dinner later, so Kakashi warned him to go easy, but he kept it mild because his roommate was something of a bottomless pit -- and he was holding out on a better mood. 

“ _A_ suma,” Obito said, stuck in his hungry growl. “That guy always fucking knows somebody. How is it, Asuma knows _ev_ erybody?”

He ordered three skewers of salt-grilled _ayu_ , two flat round cakes called _oyaki_ made from fermented buckwheat flour, a sleeve of ginger _takoyaki_ , and a cup of candied grape and apricot. He passed on the squid.

“Did you eat at all today?” Kakashi said, only half-joking.

“Actually, I, uh -- lost my lunch.”

Obito drifted out of the main traffic with his purchases and settled in to snack on the shaded side of a leaning ginkgo. Kakashi hopped off the walk and tracked over the grassy slope after him at his own pace. Light from the harvest moon slipped silver and cold through cracks in the upper canopy. A torch crackled merrily nearby. 

“It’s just not takoyaki if it’s not octopus,” Obito concluded, settled in the grass at a fork in the root system.

Kakashi skirted the wooden nexus, slid over a thick root and dropped to his heels beside him. He stole one of his teammate’s chopsticks, and used it to stab a small _takoyaki_ dumpling in a way that would make a traditionalist cry.

“Then why’d you get ginger?”

“Wanted to try something different, I guess.”

Kakashi shrugged. He was all about ginger -- he liked his food to have bite. 

He paused with a second capture halfway to his mouth, and wondered if his teammate got them for him. 

“Bonding with Genma, huh?” He murmured conversationally. “How was that?”

Obito snorted, polished off the sweetfish, stuck the skewers in the grass, and started picking apart one of the buckwheat cakes. There was a flutter of wings in the wooded rafters. “He says I’ve got to _feel_ myself.”

“What’s that mean?”

A square-tailed drongo landed in the grass, ruffled its blue-black feathers and angled a single amber eye at his teammate. Obito picked off a bit of his _oyaki_ and shared it. 

“Fuck if _I_ know. And I really don’t give a damn if he thinks I've got a nice _ass_ et.”

Kakashi looked back over his shoulder and scanned the crowds milling to and fro up the main walk. “I don’t want him looking at your asset.”

“ _Nah_ \-- ” Obito stumbled, choked, and continued without swallowing. “Come on -- that’s not actually something people talk about, is it? I figured he was just screwing with me.”

“Um, no, it’s not,” Kakashi answered truthfully, turning and spearing another ginger ball. “And no, he wasn’t.”

“Really?” Obito’s dark eyebrows rose, then furrowed back down. “He called me fat-hands.”

Kakashi barked a laugh, caught himself quickly. “ _That’s_ him screwing with you.”

His roommate stared down at the single chopstick in his scarred fingers. They fought for the last _takoyaki_. 

“You just gotta shut him up,” Kakashi advised. “When he starts going in like that.” He speared it. “Ha!”

“I can’t -- he mixes it in with all this other stuff.” Obito abandoned his chopstick in the empty sleeve and exchanged it for the small cup of candied fruit. The drongo treated itself to his leftovers. “I don’t know whether I’m getting advice, or getting bullied.”

“Bullying takes two.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Kakashi backtracked hastily. “I just mean, people are always going to take shots at you, man -- but, you’re the one letting everything hit you.”

“That’s something a _bully_ would say,” he snapped.

Kakashi fell quiet, and felt just a little bit bad, because it did sometimes seem like everyone was determined to give Obito a hard time. It had been that way ever since he was late to the damn Academy entrance ceremony a hundred years ago, and now even when the Hokage stepped in to show him some favor, it only brought more heat down on the Uchiha from within their ranks. Even the _gate_ keeper to their apartment complex had a hair up his ass about Obito, for some fuckin’ reason. 

He also felt bad, because, Kakashi had definitely been one of those bullies -- back in school, and for a while afterwards -- and he didn’t really have an excuse for it except to say that he was making up for it now, maybe, by communicating his feelings instead of being an ass about them. But it was still hard, sometimes. 

“Hey, B?” He started, leaning one shoulder against the tree and letting himself tip onto his ass in the grass inside the ginkgo’s forking roots. The nearby torch popped and snapped loudly over the music, as if it had something to say. “What were you saying about your clan, earlier?”

Obito’s nostrils flared, and his eye darted around the swamp grass whispering at the lake’s fickle shore. Even the drongo was listening. He swallowed, stirred the last of his water candies. _Mizuame_ was especially common this time of year. “Oh, um... ” 

He prodded his goggles further up his forehead, lifted the cup to his lips and downed the last few candied fruits in one go. When all his distractions were gone and his trash arranged in a neat pile, Obito jumped to his feet and bussed it all the way to one of the collections bins lining the main walk, then scattered back down the slope in a series of zigzagging hops. Firelight suited him. Kakashi waited while he fell back under the ginkgo, leaned against its trunk, and shoved his legs out straight. Then he wiped his mouth on his arm, and looked ready to talk.

“I mean, you’re right that they’re more traditional, or whatever,” he said. “But lots of people don’t know what those traditions are. In the Uchiha clan, it’s actually considered more honorable to, uh -- pursue a relationship with a man. Instead of, uh, a woman.”

And Kakashi uttered the single most dumbfounded syllable of his entire life. “ _Uh?_ ”

“Yup,” Obito issued a nervy bit of laughter. Glowing embers scattered over his orange lenses. “It’s ancient Bushido rules, bro. We don’t follow a lot of them anymore, but -- if I brought the _Copy Nin_ back to the compound, the fuckers would probably throw me a parade.” 

Kakashi tracked the progress of a self-conscious flush bleeding over his teammate’s face, indifferent to skin or scar, until it lit up his eartips. When he’d drank his fill he pushed his nose under the corner of his jaw, grazed his closed mouth over his skin, and thought of leaving a prayer for next season on his throat. 

“I would’ve told you,” Obito’s next words split up between quick, inadequate breaths. “If, I thought it was, a big deal.”

It wasn’t, sort of. But it was, a big deal -- because Kakashi had been doing his _damned_ est not to make life any harder for his teammate, even if that meant fudging the finances and subtly misdirecting tails and keeping absolutely everything on the low. He knew they could probably continue to get by with or without family support, but it was an instant relief to know he wouldn’t be outcast just for the nature of their relationship. Their -- thing. 

“B… ” He mumbled. Obito hummed back, tipped his head and exposed more of his neck. Kakashi took the offering -- didn’t do anything too wet and nasty even though he kind of wanted to -- but he felt his pulse through his lips, tasted the salt on his skin, sunk his canine into the soft tab of his ear. Then he remembered a fragment of what he wanted to say. “Wanna... go out?”

“Really? Again?” 

“No. I mean, _yeah_ , but -- ” He leaned back with enormous effort. If he stumbled any more he was going to verbally fall the fuck over. Kakashi cut to the chase: “Wanna be together? With me.” 

Obito eyed him like there was a weight over his chest and he could only just see past it, and Kakashi felt the rough pads of his teammate's fingers find him in the gloom; they scoured his chin, his jaw, the edge of the scar under his eye. Flickering, fiery glare crept in on the boundaries of his vision like overexposure in an old photograph.

“Okay,” he said finally. Kakashi had almost forgot what he was waiting for, and got a kind of rush when he remembered. _Obito_. He felt the edges of his smile sharpen, buzzed on the rare euphoria of selfishness rewarded; everything he wanted was coming to him in bits and pieces -- Anko was crazy; Obito needed him. He’d said so himself. 

It made it difficult not to push harder. 

“Did you think I’d say no?” his roommate challenged, intolerant, bold to the point of belligerence. Kakashi loved him fiercely for it.

“No,” he said. “But I guess I never thought about you saying yes.” 

“Well, you, really piss me off sometimes." He admitted. Kakashi dropped his gaze to the grass. "And when I see that stuff like with the fire lilies, it makes me think -- what else can you do, without trying, or anybody really knowing. And it scares me, but -- ”

Thank the gods there was a fucking _but_. Kakashi lifted his eyes. It seemed like his teammate was doing a lot of work. 

“I’ve been thinking about something the kid said,” he continued. “About a world without monsters. I get it now, I think. Everyone’s in a cave, aren’t they? All the monsters are… our own. I guess I got hung up on yours, because -- because Rin never had any. At least, I never thought so.”

Kakashi turned a wicked glare across the lake, feeling childish. He’d never match the fuck up.

“But I have lots of them now, too,” said Obito, weary. “And it’s stupid to think about anytime before caves, now. You’re kind of an ass, but -- if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably be off in the mountains eating my own hair and starting a cult, or something.”

Kakashi snorted, folded his arms over his knees and settled his chin over them. Obito stretched up flat against the tree trunk and groaned like he’d just come home after a long day. He looked down at him. 

“Fuck it,” he decided. “You’re my best friend, K -- always looking out, even when it’s annoying. I see you trying to say nice things, and stuff; it’s hilarious, and I really appreciate it. And icing me up, today, after a whole hike with Genma’s fuckin’ one-man show -- that was awesome. Appearances are the least of my problems but I was really low and I needed that.” 

"And, um." Obito took a half-breath, then: “When you take your mask off, it makes me want to throw you into stuff.” 

Kakashi’s skin prickled. “Obito…”

“Fuck, man. I’m tired of running from you.” His teammate huffed, and looked alarmed by his next words. “You can kiss me, if you want. Sorry if I taste gross.”

He tasted like sweet ginger and apricot. 

He didn’t know how long they sat in the shadows under the ginkgo tree, but it was long enough for the roadside torches to burn noticeably down, and for the lake’s moon-thickened waters to rise incrementally along the slope. It was plenty of time for Kakashi to collect the nerve to reach across Obito’s collar bones, angle him with a touch under his jaw, another to the side of his face -- and then struggle for an idea what to do with his legs. Eventually he ended up sort of kneeling over his roommate’s upper leg. 

But the arrangement was doomed to fail. The closer Kakashi tried to get the more he seemed to be fighting with his own knees and finally he broke away and adjusted them, again -- lifted them up and over, tucked one foot under Obito’s far leg, and lengthened into the new position with a small sigh of relief. Much better.

While he was distracted his teammate shifted his attention, kissed him sweet and hard under the corner of his mouth -- but all Kakashi wanted to do was taste him.

Obito bumped the bridge of his nose against his cheek, snorted. “Your fucking legs.”

Kakashi grimaced. _Annoying_.

“You’re gonna have another growth spurt, in your twenties.” he warned. “I hope you get stupid long legs, and none of your clothes cover your ankles, anymore.”

He wiggled his fingers under one of the chains around the knee of Kakashi’s street clothes, and seemed to test its give. “‘M not complaining.” he muttered.

Obito’s Sharingan reflected back at him in the darkness and Kakashi felt the heat of a blush start to build on his neck -- forced it down. Hell. He didn’t understand how the person closest to him could still feel so mad distant. Sometimes he saw Obito’s chest move and it still took him by surprise. 

“Open your mouth,” he said, didn’t mean to snap. “Fuck’s sake.”

The wheel spun half-lidded in the fire-flecked dusk and Kakashi thought something was strange about it but couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was -- his teammate’s Sharingan was identical to his own. 

Obito jostled his near shoulder underneath Kakashi’s and his arm wound its way around his back, reeled him in closer; their lips met once, separated, a short-order sigh hit the corner of his mouth, and his teammate’s hand pushed up under the back of his shirt. 

Kakashi rolled his eyes to the sky and thought of asking for mercy again, but before he’d even formed the plea his teammate’s other hand started a slow ride from his knee to his hip, where it fiddled with the edge of his sweater before sliding up underneath. He recaptured his mouth just as Obito dragged the pad of his thumb along the underside of his belly, then shoved hot and open-handed against his bare side. The heel of his other palm scuffed low over his back, and Kakashi felt a few of his fingers trace the line where his boxers rose over his pants.

“B,” he rasped, like an accusation -- because he’d had his roommate pinned in the dark and passionate category but he didn’t expect him to be so casually _good_ at it. Obito couldn’t handle _rice_ paper without getting the shakes. His attempts at brush calligraphy sent Kakashi into fits of the giggles. 

But his hands bullied him. It wasn’t funny at all -- it was black magic and Kakashi raked his hands over the Uchiha’s ears, accidentally shoved his goggles out of the picture, towed his bare fingertips through his hair. From there it was easier to hold him steady, tip his head and attack at the right angle to force his mouth open. Kakashi stroked his tongue once, base to tip -- and before he could settle on any sensical reason _not_ to, he leaned his forearms over his teammate’s shoulders and used the leverage to lift his hips. Obito’s exploring hand was forced south. 

The indiscreet chirrup of a flicking lighter arrived a split second before an outsider’s voice threw a hairline crack in their trance. Kakashi drew back feeling sated and calm but every breath fluttered in his chest like a wild heartbeat, adjacent. 

“I knew about the bets. Joined a few pools myself, actually.” said the newcomer. “Never thought I’d be the one to witness it out in the open.”

Asuma paused graciously while they reassembled into two separate people. He swirled the contents of a tall can in his hand and lifted it to his lips. Kakashi recognized the red-yellow label and identified it as _Asahi_ draft beer. 

“I’ve been standing here for three seconds.”

Kakashi knew that. He’d been hoping their fellow jōnin would stay quiet just two more. 

“I can’t tell if it’s voyeurism or just poor planning.”

“Asuma,” Obito growled. “What d’you fuckin’ want about?”

Asuma chuckled deeply and a bunch of smoke poured out his mouth -- Kakashi noticed a crimpled hand-rolled cig between his forefinger and middle knuckle. “Wondering if you two are still down for dinner, that’s all.”

Obito was getting up but he was totally using his grip on Kakashi’s side to do it, knowingly or not, and his palm was burning a crescent on the outside of his stomach. Kakashi looked at it with his activated eye, saw vespers of smoke-like chakra rising from his hand, and wondered for the first time if it had something to do with those goddamn gloves. 

“I don’t remember ordering an escort.” he hummed, taking Obito’s extended arm and helping himself up before his teammate even got fully to his feet. 

“Didn’t have to,” Asuma drawled. “Anko signed you up for the deluxe package. Personal pick-up and delivery -- drinks included.” 

“Forgot your rickshaw,” Obito muttered, brushing at the ass of his shorts. 

Their comrade smiled loosely, lopsided and hospitable. He spread his arms. “I’ve got beer, crack, and dope.”

Obito’s eye rolled but he reached out to Asuma; their palms met, slid out, linked fingers for a moment, then fell back to each other’s sides, trust restored. “We don’t want your _Panda Pop._ ”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged. Asuma always came through. 

Kakashi adjusted his mask, caught his roommate’s gaze and reminded him their conversation would continue later before covering his eye again. Then he shifted his feet and greeted their comrade the same way. 

“Kash,” he grinned generously. “Looking to score?”

“We’re set,” he said as their hands linked, knowing open drug deals made Obito antsy. “Where’s your terminal condition?”

Asuma sighed, gestured vaguely with his can. “You know. Getting _ready_. It’s a ninety-minute wait from there, at least.”

“Listen up, men -- ” he continued, militant. “You know what the number one leading cause of relationships is? It’s not looks. It’s not charm. It’s _proximity_. That’s right -- anybody in the neighborhood. It seems great at first. One of the homies has what you want and everybody around you is fucking, so.” He shrugged again. “But then comes the expectations, and the _stan_ dards, and pretty soon you’re at each other’s throats; miss one _tea_ -tasting ceremony and you’re some kind of criminal; one afternoon of training and you’re accused of _hiding_ ; one drink at the end of the day and suddenly your whole family’s in your apartment telling you you’ve got a _pro_ blem, and your facial hair is out of control -- ”

“This is getting pretty specific.”

“You shouldn’t’ve blown off the tea-tasting, dude.” said Obito.

“ _Shhh,_ ” Asuma hissed through his teeth. “She can’t get out of the apartment in less than three hours and _I’m_ the unreliable one.”

He started his trudge back up the slope to the main walk, looking back over his shoulder to see that they were following. 

“Trust me,” he said. “Casual is the way to go, with this stuff. It spares everyone a whole lot of wasted time and energy.” 

He kicked back the rest of the _Asahi_ , tossed the can aside, and lifted one eyebrow at them. “But then again, who knows? Maybe it’s different in the gay community.”

Obito’s eye narrowed critically on the discarded can.

“No, it’s the same,” said Kakashi, mild. “He pretty much hides all week.”

“Fucker.” His roommate cursed, distracted. “You’re hours late to _ev_ erything.”

“It takes a lot of time to look this good.” 

“Really?” Asuma lowered his cigarette. “It’s really like that?”

“Oh, for sure,” Obito rolled his eye. “People grow up but they don’t change, really. You’ve got better luck shaking a drug habit than narcissism.”

“I don’t know who you’re calling a narcissist,” Kakashi hummed. “You’re the one who thinks everyone’s touching you.”

“Shut up!” He flared. “Why would you tell him that?” Obito struck out and Kakashi dodged ahead.

One of the burning torches came into view as they crested the slope. Asuma stepped into its glow and looked back at them doubtfully. “You guys are just trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?" He accused. "Everything’s perfect.”

“Sorry, man.” Obito admitted, lifting his shoulders. 

Kakashi grinned under his mask -- his teammate was always willing to play along, even if he pretended to hate the game. Kakashi snagged on his sleeve just before he re-entered the light, shoved his nose behind his ear and snapped his teeth. 

“Dumbass,” the Uchiha murmured, pulling away and settling back into the schooling crowds alongside Asuma. But he caught Kakashi’s hand, and held onto it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy v-day from the fool 
> 
> back to b's perspective next
> 
> so delighted to read comments on the last chapters -- i'll always respond, just been a little behind, lately, putting the music together and stuff. plz continue to hmu with <3/feedback


	14. interlude: the king

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this interlude is mostly just silliness and flashbacks before the next bit. 
> 
> more art for u
> 
> (trying to get playlists up and running, too -- 8tracks is the best but it's also shit)

It threw a wrench in any casual friendship -- going to sleep for three years. 

In fact, forget the wrench. One of those big clunky _mameluke_ swords, Obito thought. The ones FOB made you wear on certain pompous dignitary gigs. They were long and stupidly shaped and always catching on his heels, ripping open private doors as he walked past, just to make people think he was a creep.

It threw a mameluke in any friendship -- going to sleep for three years. 

When they were eight years old, and Kakashi and Obito were dicking around Devil’s Den, Sarutobi Asuma fell into the quarry outside of town, broke his femur, and was only found hours later that night. 

Nothing really bothered him much, after that. 

When Asuma hit him up, a couple weeks after moving into the fifth-floor bachelor pad on the corner of piss alley and barbed wire block -- Obito had been fighting with his new roommate, and didn’t think too hard about accepting an invitation to chill with the neighborhood king and a group of people Sarutobi referred to as a ‘small troop’. 

The evening began innocently enough with a ride around the park, to the south gate, and then to a kind of place he’d never seen before. At a _k-bar_ , instead of everybody getting a table, each party is escorted to their own _box_ , with a giant singing _screen_ inside, and a little machine on the wall that sent a server with a six-pack of beer and a fresh bowl of melon seeds to crack. Obito tried the other buttons to see what else would happen, but the result was always a variation on food and liquor. The 'troop' turned out to be his old classmates -- only the friendly ones, with a few obvious absences: Fuyumichi was having a cursed bunyon removed; Yahagi had a foot-ache. Genma fell ill after eating a mysterious fruit from the Crickle-Crack tree. 

Obito found it all very suspicious, at first.  
_Every_ body knew not to eat fruit from the Crickle-Crack tree.  
The fuck was a _bunyon_ , anyway?

Eventually he forgot all about the weird stuff because everyone was really chill, that day. Kurenai kept him talking with easy, kind questions; Anko spent the whole evening keeping him fed, putting shit in his bowl at dinner like a busy old mom -- and holy shit the girls had _breasts_ now and even the thought of the word tasted weird in his brain. Raidō and Ebisu taught him to play a drinking game in a local dialect he didn’t understand. Asuma filled the whole room with smoke. 

After the singing box they met up with a guy in a ripped jacket with faded tattoos and a girl on his back, riding a self-propelling bike. They sucked funny-tasting vapors out of glass pens, in a shifty alleyway with lots of vines and barbed wire. 

And it wasn’t even over, after that. 

Obito remembered being herded into getting afters at a strange little eatery hidden inside a bamboo grove -- so tall and so green it seemed lighted from within, like one of nature’s indomitable green seats -- but it was along a busy stretch of main road near Gentlemen’s Alley; the grove sprung from the urban landscape so sudden and so absurd it should’ve been fake, and Obito remembered testing the rippled fronds with his fingertips, finding them genuine, flesh-like and warm. It was like some crazy dream, trapped inside the city.

Inside everything was dry cedar and wet stone veined in the kind of bright green lichen that only grew in very clean air. A maze of walkways guided them aimlessly around carefully groomed rock gardens, thick copses of bamboo, and bobbing demon lanterns. The air stirred with the distant tip- _clunk_ sounds of bamboo rocking fountains striking rock, and everywhere water scurried underfoot -- dark and talkative. Obito remembered crossing a series of arched bridges so tiny he could cover each one in three steps. There was something about reaching the other side of a bridge that settled your soul.

The constant echo of the rocking fountains had bothered him, at first. Like _kakashi_ , the _shishi-odoshi_ were designed to frighten dangerous things away from valuable agriculture.

Eventually the sound faded into the background and Obito forgot about it.

They all ate cross-bridge noodles, because the place was famous for it. The story behind the dish was a local legend about two lovers separated by a river. The man had an illness, so the woman crossed a bridge over perilous waters each day to bring a bowl of special noodles to her weakened lover. And she died from it, he guessed. Obito forgot the end of the story. He supposed it worked better in the local dialect, where ‘to cross’ also meant in the process of crossing, having already crossed -- and also, to have endured something, and passed beyond it. He liked the idea but thought the recipe needed work; the broth was bland and some of the more fibrous mushrooms looked like they were alive and swimming around in there.

They'd sat on pillows near a little fire pit to eat. The nearest guests were a faint murmur, and Obito thought of an article that came out in the _Hidden Leaf_ that morning, about water being the store of all human memory. 

And Asuma filled the air with smoke. 

After insisting he didn’t need an escort, or a goddamn _cab_ , Obito walked home that night along piss alley, after what’d felt like _twelve_ nights of socializing. He bought a candy bar and one of those canned sweet teas from a corner mart, just to remind his tongue what cheap garbage tasted like. Didn't want to wake the gatekeeper so he'd jumped the gate, simultaneously tripped the alarm and tore a hole in the ass of his shorts.

It was the first night Obito remembered entering Kakashi’s room -- and submerging himself gratefully in the _okay, whatever_ quiet that made up the bulk of their off-and-on friendship. 

He didn’t know simple things like eating and chilling could be so formidable and exhausting until he did them with Asuma and the gang. 

Hanging out with his teammate, even when they were _en_ emies, had never taken so much effort. They had habits, he realized: hacky-sack after class; wander the loop in the late afternoon. They made walking meals from street food and practiced chasing each other over rooftops; they'd get caught in the rain and stay out twice as long. Lazing around Green Lake skatepark between mission briefings, Kakashi would show him the new tricks. Obito could never figure out skateboards -- tried once or twice and each time swore off civilian toys forever -- and he didn't really give a shit about what a blunt _fakie_ was, but his teammate was good at everything and sometimes it was just fun to watch. 

He and K got all those awkward first meetings out of the way a hundred years ago. There wasn’t any need left to front, not after all the miserable mission days; and sharing everything they had, even all the fucked up history neither of them wanted; and certainly not after the _Shivering Forest_ \-- countless nights spent in the brush, freezing their nuts off and shitting in holes, so cold Obito couldn't find his dick at night when he got up to piss -- there wasn't any room left for effort, or awkwardness, after that. The friendship itself might've been shaky, but as a team they were impenetrable.

Sometimes. Deep in the night when their ankles crossed paths, Obito worked his roommate's shirt to his elbows and between his snapping teeth and milky skin he would accept that beauty and brutality sometimes wore the same face.

City-life took the wind out of him and whenever Obito started to feel heavy and the days dragged, he'd take himself to the mountains to fill up again on the breath of Mt. Philo, spit and froth from Tiger Leaping Gorge. Sometimes Kakashi was allowed to come, too. If he was around, and only if he promised not to start fights.

Obito was on his last wind when he decided to take it down to the lake’s edge and away from the excitement of the Goose Fair. And he felt a little better, after eating and groping his teammate under the ginkgo tree, but he knew for a fact he’d need about _eleven_ more winds, at least, to get through a night with Asuma and his fucking troop.

But when he said as much, Kakashi only scratched him behind the ear like he was silly shit.  
It felt like they were speaking totally different languages, sometimes.

Asuma led the way back to the main roads, and soon Raidō met up with them, fresh from his _kendo_ class and caked to the ankles in mushy grass clippings, a big honking wooden sword strapped to his back. 

Obito didn’t understand why his teammate was always on him about sparring, all the time. He and Raidō could play pointy sticks whenever they wanted; Anko was a chunin still, but she was devilishly tricky; and Asuma was one of the best close-range melee fighters in the village. Sure, nothing gave your position away faster than a lit cigarette, but it didn’t exactly matter, with his fighting style.

The Hokage’s son hadn’t made the list for jōnin exams last year, but Asuma perfected his Flying Swallow technique that autumn; according to the rumors, it had started to embarrass the military pecking order -- having a chunin stomp-stomping his superiors’ nuts -- so they gave him his colors that spring, against the Third's recommendation. 

The shinobi ranks looked different to Obito, now that they weren’t all blank-faced strangers killing strangers; now they were his stupid classmates and stoner friends, people he half-heartedly grew up next to and half-wanted to protect. The squad was young, dumb, and dangerous -- and breaking all the city standards. The laziest nin of his left-behind past were suddenly grown and lethal, and if that wasn’t weird enough, Kakashi had stepped _down_ from ANBU. The girls had _breasts_.

Obito was starting to think he woke up in another dimension. And the lines between them seemed so thin lately, he wouldn’t even be surprised. 

Kakashi elbowed him purposefully, and Obito’s toe caught on a bit of cedar planking laying over a hole where a section of the parkway had sunk. He caught himself and looked over his shoulder to blame the plank. 

“What’s wrong with you?” His roommate’s words caught up to him in a rush. “Fuck’s sake.”

“Huh? Oh -- ” Maybe Kakashi was right. Maybe he did daydream too much. “That’s a really complicated question.”

It made him feel sort of guilty, sometimes. The ANBU thing. But he also didn’t know what he’d do if he woke up in this fast hell and everyone was making waves -- and lazing around the skatepark with K was a thing of the past.

His teammate tweaked the tip of his ear and ducked Obito’s wide swing. He wanted to strangle him, sometimes.

“ -- any three ingredients together, I swear,” Raidō was saying, two steps ahead. “And I’ve got twenty people in the kitchen like ‘ _what’s cooking?_ ’”

“Seriously?” Asuma chuckled. His shoulders hunched and Obito heard the flick of a lighter an instant before the flavor of the province’s light-footed tobacco leaf tinted the torchlight. 

“Eggs, tomatoes, green onions.” Raidō confirmed. “ _Bang_ \-- Ebisu’s home, G’s back, Anko and Yahagi brought a friend along, Might is there with the entire _youth club_ , and they’re all asking about dessert -- I mean, what am I running here, a fucking chicken coop?”

Asuma offered him a pull on his stogie. “That does sound pretty good, though,” he rumbled, in good humor. “I haven’t eaten anything homecooked since my mom kicked me out.”

Raidō stuttered over a surprised cough. Some escaped smoke fled up his nose. “You’re always welcome at the Coop, cousin,” he uttered, pulling briefly on his comrade’s shoulder. “I actually don’t mind cooking for people.”

Anko was in a much better mood than when they saw her last. Similar to violent rages, hives and facial swelling came and went.

When they caught sight of the pair, Genma made an emotional dive for his other roommate, and Anko loosened Kakashi from Obito's side, which came as something of a relief. He didn't notice until recently, but the Copy Nin had a way of always making you feel intently watched. Maybe it was just him, though.

Anko drove them into roadside stalls almost every other turn; she preferred purveyors of odd things: antiques from overseas, lucky gourds, ceremonial puppets. They stopped at the tent of a man who only sold cast iron cages for wraiths. Then the blanket of a woman sewing immense scenes into embroidery panels. Dark oceans, ancient battlefields, plains dotted with wild horses and mountains terraced with rice paddies packed to the horizon, all woven from a myriad of tiny, colored threads. If you looked really close at them, the faces on the small embroidery people got scary. 

“That’s what I like about you, Obito,” Anko had brayed. “You’re not afraid to say what you feel.”

Obito didn’t know any other way. 

At one of the busier tents, he lingered outside for a break from the toys, trinkets, and shallow conversation. The sky was seamless black velvet; night settled thick and soft around them, but the Goose Fair remained bright and feverishly loud. 

After a while, Obito heard laughter inside the tent and went to look. 

Genma and Raidō were in front of a tall board pinned with a variety of colorful keychain ornaments -- crafts made from hand-spun dyed goat or yak hair, Obito couldn’t tell which -- and the shinobi seemed to be clamping down on some powerful source of amusement.

“B!” Genma called out, waving him over. Obito frowned. He didn’t recall ever giving the poison user permission to call him by a letter. “B, B, B, B, B -- ”

He rolled his eye, tucked his hands in his pockets and sauntered over just to make him shut up. Close up, the two smelled like crushed grass and skunk. 

“Look at this,” said Genma, gesturing at the board of hanging merchandise. There were palm-sized pigs, mice, and roosters, a few smiling cactus plants, strawberries, and a fruit Obito recognized but had never tried before called pineapple. They were all sort of fuzzy and friendly-looking. One of the faces called to mind a strange lioness. 

“Doesn’t this one remind you of Kash?” 

“What’re you -- “ Obito followed his hand with his eye, preparing to swat him away. “Oh, wow. It really does.”

The creature he pointed out didn’t seem to be imitating any kind of animal at all: it was simply a head and four long limbs of equal length -- bleached white, flecked in gray; its expression was not unhappy, but not smiling either. Just neutral. 

Obito crossed his arms and nodded. The legs, paleness, the casual funk in its posture -- the little yarn critter was so spot-on for his teammate it was uplifting, somehow.

“Ma-an,” he added, feeling generous. “That’s him. That's the happiest he ever gets.”

Raidō unleashed a wet snort and Genma slapped at his knees, giggling like mad. And even though a large part of him was still asking _what the fuck am I looking at, here_ \-- for a second they reminded Obito of him and Kakashi, when they were overdosed on real-world trials and a bit too high to be bothered. Suddenly he didn’t feel so harshly towards them, anymore. Or towards himself, so much.

  


“Raidō,” said Genma, when they settled. “I’ll get you the cock.”

The young swordsman waved his hand, stone-faced. “Two is plenty, thanks.”

Obito snorted. “Two?”

“Can you believe this?” A fourth perspective intruded. 

It was Asuma. He stopped pacing nearby, and stared out the mouth of the merchant’s tent. “I’ve seen all the other girls here. I don’t get it. What’s she got to do with her hair that takes so goddamn long? She _knew_ we were going out tonight -- she should’ve started doing it this morning!”

Obito assumed by ‘all the other girls’ he meant Anko. And perhaps Kakashi, who tended to become Anko's sidearm until an actual female arrived. This, together with the image of his roommate in those little dog ears, set him giggling alongside Raidō and Genma.

“You know what she asked me, today?" said Asuma. "I was leaving to train, this morning, and you know what she asked?”

Obito shook his head, perplexed by the jōnin's perplexion. “No, what?” Genma knuckled him in the side. Obito hit him back.

Asuma payed them no mind. “What’s my favorite _color_.” He finished.

Raidō coughed into his elbow. His _bokken_ tapped the display and all the keychain critters chattered. “What did you say?”

“I said I don’t know.” Asuma paused, shrugged. “I said my favorite color’s between your legs. And she says, so -- it’s pink.”

Genma bent over his knees and his roommate clutched at him. Obito wondered if this was a side-effect of Kakashi's purple dragon. 

“Yeah,” Asuma continued, looking cheered. He liked an audience. “Like, what if guys had to do that? What if I was three hours late because I had to, dye my fuckin’ beard, or something?”

“ _What_ beard?” The challenge arrived together with Anko at the edges of the conversation, the Copy Nin in tow. She had presumably sated her desire to ogle every funny-looking craft in the joint.

“It’s coming in,” Asuma thoughtfully stroked his jawline.

Kakashi peeled away from the kunoichi and made a beeline over, uncovered his eye with a casual gesture and instantly became three times as scary. Obito started to feel itchy and watched. Why was he always _do_ ing that?

"My head hurts," said Kakashi.

It was said quiet and mild as usual but there was a petulant little crease between his brows and Obito's annoyance vanished. He knew his roommate got headaches sometimes, but he'd never heard him complain about it.

"Bad?"

"No." He shook his head. "Like the world is too loud."

"Your friends are too loud." Obito said under his breath. But he didn't know how to quiet them all down short of _Tsukuyomi_.

“What’s that mean, though, Anko?" Asuma had given up defending his hair growth. "What’s it mean when a woman needs three hours to _get ready?_ ”

“Low standards.” She declared. “We have high standards for ourselves, and low standards for our partners. It’s a virus started by men to keep women divided. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve met who think just because they know how to use a _rice_ -cooker they’re suddenly eligible _live-in_ material.”

Asuma nodded, slow and contemplative. Then: “I don’t get it.” 

He turned to Obito, perhaps because he was closest. And with unwavering sincerity, he asked: “Do you guys have this problem in the gay community?”

He opened his mouth, a little fire on his tongue -- because he liked Asuma a lot but if the dude elected him representative of this phantom _‘gay community’_ one more time, he was going to flip someone over his head. And everyone would call _Obito_ the nutcase, of course.

Before he could get started, though, Kakashi answered -- not coldly but so dry you could feel it on your lips. “We can both use a rice-cooker, if that’s what you mean.”

Sometimes Obito wished he hadn’t missed out on so many years of his friend as a teenage smart-ass. Kakashi had about _four_ chains on at any given moment, without even trying, and nothing could touch him like that. 

“I’m sure _any_ one,” Anko eyeballed Asuma meaningfully while she emphasized the word. “Can struggle with communication in a relationship. Es _peci_ ally,” here she eyeballed Genma. “If one of them is using a different orifice.”

Genma pulled his little finger from his nose. “I don’t talk out my ass.” He said, wiping his hand on his coat. They had gathered at the entrance of the kitschy tent like some kind of extraordinary security squad. “But I’m suddenly hearing a whole lot of vagina.”

“Well, it’s about fucking time!” She started to roll up her sleeves. “Allow me to open your ears, shithead -- ”

“This one time,” Kakashi intercepted gently. “I was on my lunch break. And Obito came home -- doesn’t even look my way, right? Doesn’t say hey, what’s up, or nothing. It's just: _‘Make two of those.’_ ”

Anko _tsk_ ed loudly, and her killer eyeball turned on him. Obito poured his energy into beating down an ashamed flush because he didn’t remember what Kakashi was talking about, specifically, but it sounded kind of familiar.

“We were so poor at the time,” he idled on. “We didn’t go out, and we barely had the shit to cook. I said _Obito_ , I’m putting peanut butter on a slice of fucking bread. And he says, 'Great, two of those.'”

“How about a _’please’_ , U- _chi_ -ha?” Anko cracked out her knuckles.

“I don’t know -- ” he shrugged his shoulders high. “I might’ve said please!”

“Why were you guys so fucking poor?” chuckled Asuma. He was rolling a new cigarette on the spot.

Obito saw the moment his horrible teammate hesitated and grabbed at the opening: “Oh, we stopped taking missions so we could have more sex.”

Palmed some wrinkles out of his shirt, when too many eyes turned to him. “And that’s what problems we have in the gay community.” He finished.

“The worst part is,” said Kakashi, slowly into the following quiet. “We ended up cutting that slice of bread in half.”

Raidō and Genma bust out laughing again. Anko covered her eyes with one hand.

Asuma huffed around his cigarette, turning to lead the way out of the tent of oddities, at last. “You guys are fucking with us,” he said. “Nobody has it that good.”

On the parkway he turned them south. When Might Guy arrived, it was with two baldies in funny outfits with even funnier names, and a familiar uproar of optimism. In all the commotion his teammate dropped to the back and ranged in. “I hate when you do that,” he said. 

Obito didn’t know if he meant his tendency to avoid shouting bald men, or all the bullshit about their nonexistent sex life. “You love when I do that.” He decided.

“Where d’you get it all?” He almost sounded mad, the idiot. “Where do you find all that bullshit?”

Obito tried to shrug him off. “Right where you left it.”

Kakashi sighed, and just in case he hadn’t made his frustration clear enough, he threw his hands behind his neck. They had to split ways to pass a group of civilian schoolchildren still in uniform. It was way too late for little kids, but holidays generally meant no rules, especially around the park. Obito thought Green Lake was probably one of the shadiest places to leave your schoolchildren lying around -- what with all the spooks and thugs and demon scrolls flying about -- but, well, that’s the city for you.

“You get mad at me for starting fights, in _pri_ vate,” said the Copy Nin, on the other side of the throng. He thought he was hot shit in his street clothes but the knees were missing on his pants. “And you’re a public tease.”

Kakashi loved that fucking game. He even started it, half the time. Obito didn’t understand why he had to hate on the players, suddenly. 

“Are you _try_ ing to make me think about that stuff?”

“Maybe I think about it too.”

His roommate went quiet for a moment. Then: “Agh,” he grunted. “I can’t tell if you’re _still_ doing it.”

Obito grinned. Kakashi sort of deadpanned back at him but his lower eyelids were twitching, and once you spend a decade talking to a dude's eyes over his mask you really don’t need the rest of his face to tell how he’s feeling. It had taken Obito a little while to adjust to talking with his _own_ eye, though. 

“Are you good?” Kakashi asked suddenly. 

He blinked. “What? Me?”

“I mean, d’you still want to go home? You said you were tired.”

“Hm,” Obito thought about it again. “I am, but -- ” he ruffled one hand under his shirt and tackled a persistent itch over his chest. “I kind of want to try seafood hotpot.”

Kakashi tossed his head and his eyes curled. When he reached for his hair again Obito didn’t shake him off, and he scratched at him like he was silly shit. 

“Oy.” Genma fell back through the crowd. “Stop that -- ” He warned. “No one’s allowed to be happy while the king is upset.”

Obito snorted. “Fuck the king.”

The poison user’s eyes widened comically. “What’d you say?!”

He jumped at him and Obito had to duck away to avoid a melee of jabs and some passing civilians. It had been a long time since he fought with Genma, and even longer since he purposely scuffled with anybody outside his roommate. You didn’t want to get in a real fight with Genma, generally, training or otherwise -- because the outcome was usually dead at 30 meters, from a senbon fired out his _mouth_. Obito preferred hand-to-hand and he just didn't think Shiranui was a fun match-up, for him.

He dodged one attempt at a grapple, reversed the next, and was delighted to find the poison user much easier to evade than his roommate, even in a fake fight. Eventually Obito caught his wrists and crossed them over his chest, couldn’t help chuckling at his strange loyalty. But he only had to think about it for two seconds: Asuma had affinities for both fire and wind; it made him impatient and unreasonable at times, but benevolent to a fault. You had to run the guy _down_ to give him money. ‘It all comes out in the wash,’ he always said. 

“Fuck off, man.” Obito warned. “I’ll sic my boyfriend on you. He has a headache.” 

“Go ahead -- ” Genma made as if to spit his needle and Obito fell around a frowning civilian man in a long coat. 

“He’s old news,” he continued, while the passing crowd rippled disapprovingly. “Stepped down -- took off the mask and lost his touch.”

Obito laughed, so startled he failed to parry a few blows and had to lift his arms to block. “You’re so wrong.”

“Asuma could hold him off.”

“No _way!_ ” He crowed, incensed. "The only way Asuma could beat K-dot is in a _fore_ head contest!"

“Obito -- ” It was his teammate, in the tone he always used when Obito was talking too much shit. But Obito was in match mode and all he could see was Genma’s lopsided leer. He tackled him and seemed to get the upper hand in a headlock.

“Next week is cram battles,” the poison user gritted. “Me and the king. You and your dog -- what d’you say?”

“You trying to make a _bet?_ ”

“Sure -- how much?”

“Make some reservations at the nursery, man," Obito boasted. "You greenhorns are going down like _genin_. I’ll put a _ryo_ on it.”

“Let’s make it three.”

He loosened his modified headlock. “Three _ryo_? Are you serious?”

Genma shrugged, elbowed his way free and backed off finally. Obito was left with the feeling he’d been hustled into something. 

But Kakashi fought like the fucking Sannin -- there was no way they could lose to a couple of fresh promotions like Asuma and Genma. He might’ve stepped down in rank but anyone who’d seen the Copy Nin in combat knew he made the rest of the world look like it’d stepped down around _him_. 

Anko suddenly dropped within listening distance, and Genma abruptly changed the subject.

“ -- I peeled off a toenail so big, it looked like a _boom_ erang.”

She immediately frowned. “And you left it lying around for someone to step on, I suppose.”

“I get rid of them, I swear,” he paused before the punchline. “But they always come back.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Good observation.” Kakashi’s eyes drifted. 

Anko fell in beside the Copy Nin. “What were they fighting about?” She turned to Obito. “What’re you guys _al_ ways fighting for?”

“You’re one to talk,” said Genma. “You got in two fights on the way over here.”

“That’s different -- ” she said. “I don’t make it a habit to _brawl_ openly; just, every once in a while -- an ass-whooping is necessary.”

He shrugged. “Sounds like a double-standard to me.”

The kunoichi reddened swiftly. “Is not!”

Obito was starting to realize that the poison user would simply pick on whoever in the vicinity was the most volatile. And Anko outranked him by a hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story is really about Obito falling in love with everybody mkay
> 
> next piece coming up, already part-written. more stories, more of the gang, more noms.  
> we'll close out the holiday arc with a bang. ;)
> 
> preview? preview.
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 


	15. interlude: the king ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update on the fly.  
> already writ, i swear  
> plus a little soft core kakaobi art for u

Obito never thought a simple thing like eating out could be so intimidating and stressful until seafood hotpot. 

Asuma’s friend’s restaurant was opening just outside the south gate, the largest and most well-trafficked of the park’s four byways. Obito took note, because to open a restaurant around the south gate, you had to have either mad wealth or crazy connections. 

When they walked in and a bunch of young men in their twenties were lounging around in black chef coats, Obito decided it was the latter. There were no other guests; the employees jumped up like they were waiting for them and guided them through the frankly grand facilities while another young guy who was the chef came out to talk and smoke and roar with Asuma. Obito didn’t get a good idea of their conversation but he was left with the impression that Sarutobi could get anything he wanted.

Navigating the new restaurant was like climbing through a strange wood. 

The art was fanciful and bizarre: paradoxes of shapeless things that somehow had form, in colors and materials Obito couldn’t name; they challenged his tools of perception so bad he averted his eyes from every sculpture and wall-hanging -- felt fronds of their strangeness brush over his shoulders as he passed. The flameless light fixtures in the floors and walls moved in a way he didn’t like. 

Canals of water joined several rooms on the first floor. It reminded him of the hidden bamboo grove, a little bit, except not so shadowed; the water was hushed under glass and too pale and clean to be from the Green Lake’s arteries. Koi travelled the artificial canals underfoot like oblivious civilian passersby from another world. Shimmery pearl-white, zebra-striped and dappled orange -- they were the prettiest fish he’d ever seen and Obito had dropped to his heels for a second, for a look. The world moved on without him and he discovered that fish were shy. Even beautiful fish were shy, sometimes. 

Low lily-pad tables were strewn around the dining areas, some with stools, others set against walls with low booths, and some with traditional floor seating. Gently wrinkled rugs linked tables to one another. They reminded Obito of the shadows of vines or water snakes in a dark pond. Sheer hanging curtains cut the wide spaces into hushed corridors. Obito stepped on something warm and lifted his foot to find a false torch set in the floor -- a little square of fabric fluttering over an orange light bulb. 

They ascended by way of a steep, narrow set of stairs zig-zagging up the center column of the building, and he pinned his arms to his sides, feeling like a child again in the Uchiha compound; if he touched anything he was bound for an explosive misunderstanding. 

There was something about batting your way around a hundred hanging curtains that made you feel like an intruder -- like you’re deep inside something you know nothing about. 

The top level was part patio and veranda, with only a few low lily pad tables. No fish and no water, this time, just wild-looking indoor plants on polished cedar floors dressed in the same soft faded rugs. 

They had to bend to avoid a slanting ceiling but once Obito sat down against the wall and slid over to the window, the world at knee-height became much less mystifying; the tablecloth warmed his knees, an autumn breeze came and went in whispering eddies over the back of his neck, and the corny fair tunes receded to just the right volume -- even the strangeness of the decor started to seem welcoming. False torchlight was easy on the eye.

Obito recoiled from a jab in his side and turned back to the table in time to see his comrades raising cups around him -- and he admitted maybe he really did stare out windows and space out a lot. 

He met in quick succession his teammate’s visible eye, the cup in his hand, and an identical one on the low table in front of him; it was small and handle-less -- one of those traditional ceramic jobbies with barely a gulp in them. Obito circled it with two fingers and a thumb and stared at its faintly swirling contents: an abyss of milky white liquid, shimmering like koi scales. It looked cold, silver, and faintly freckled in dark needle-like punctures -- like the night sky inverted. 

“Doboroku,” his teammate informed him, before his head knocked back and Obito caught just a glimpse of the mole under the corner of his mouth before the mask slid back in place. 

Kakashi’s skin had a sort of alien paleness against dark wood. 

A gentle snort at his shoulder. “Just drink it.”

Obito took his first taste of _doboroku_ in a single pull -- expected it to burn, and wasn’t disappointed, but it didn’t stop at his mouth, or his throat, or even his stomach; when the sake was nothing but a sweet memory on his tongue, the heat was still spreading liberally over his chest, and after a couple of deep breaths to bottle it down, it lingered there. 

Some of the shit they ate in the next hour Obito didn’t even have a name for, let alone a method for taming on his plate.

He spent most of the time side-eyeing Raidō; the swordsman had a very practiced and deliberate way of eating, and he struggled to take hints on how to crack the shells and pods and exoskeletons from him -- but wouldn’t you know it, his _eye_ was on the wrong side, and Obito often got the critters disassembled on his plate just in time to wonder which parts were okay for eating, and which would get him laughed at for trying. There was a trick to getting oysters open without crushing them into a million pieces in your hand, but he never quite got the hang of it. 

Obito didn’t have a lick of natural talent.

In the end, seafood hotpot was delicious as it was grueling. Each delicate bite seemed to take an immense amount of work to liberate -- and after a while Obito started to think that was the point of it all -- you know, _all_ of it. Like maybe life, love, and happiness were all just matters of working edible bits out of hard, slimy shells. Snapping the little legs out of the way -- sucking out the eyes and brains. 

He dodged a chewy bit of squid, a fish head he wasn’t sure how to proceed on, and a bit of lobster that seemed to be just layers of translucent armor. He frowned at the remains in his bowl and opted for the wedge of yellow fruit on the side of the main platter. He knew it probably wasn’t part of the meal exactly but he sat back and sucked the juice out of the lemon, anyway, figured what the heck and ate the pulp too -- then he gnawed on the bitter rind, and it gave him some relief. 

“Obito,” his old teammate murmured. He had gone quiet after the third or fourth round of _doboroku_. “Did you just eat, the garnish?”

Obito surveyed his right side and found Kakashi half-lidded and loose, just a flicker of movement between his eyes like he was crinkling his nose at him. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Obito demanded.

“Like what?” he said, unmoving.

“Like I’m silly shit.”

“Hm,” he hummed, endlessly. Then: “Do you deny it?”

Blushing when you were already flushed and buzzy just made your vision go sort of cloudy.

“All this stuff is so hard to eat, bro,” Obito muttered under the dominating table conversation. “I’ve never even seen most of it, and I’ve been halfway around the goddamn world.”

Kakashi huffed a dry laugh, mutated in the middle by a hiccup. “That’s because you eat the same shit everywhere you go.”

“No I don’t.”

“You walked into that brand new Tani place the other day and ordered _curry_.”

“You can’t go _wrong_ with curry, that’s why,” Obito insisted, already kind of heated from the rice wine and suddenly dizzy with the day’s small frustrations. “I just think -- food should be _ea_ sy, and, obvious. And -- ”

“Mhm.”

“And I don’t even know why I’m talking to you,” he concluded. “I can’t even tell if you’re listening.”

Kakashi hummed again, started to pull his legs one at a time from the cramped table space. “Easy and obvious,” he parroted. 

The Copy Nin arranged his limbs in the same way he meditated and Obito didn’t really mind or notice the weight of one knee in his lap, but Anko was having none of it on his other side and when she shoved him away Obito accepted the addition of a second one. He didn’t know what kind of meditation technique would lead his teammate to settle into his side and close his wicked eye, but Obito was too full to put up his defenses. He blew some silver hair out of his mouth and resigned himself to his fate.

“Kash can’t hold a teacup,” Genma observed from Raidō’s other side. 

Obito’s defenses flew into place. "I told you," he narrowed his gaze on the poison user. “He doesn’t drink!”

“Not lately.”

He frowned, hung his arm over his teammate’s stacked legs, mostly because it seemed like the only place to put it. He liked that Kakashi couldn’t hold a teacup. It was people like Asuma and Raidō who could drink steadily through the night that really weirded him out. 

He turned his eye back to the table, asked himself if he was drunk and decided it was still a buzz; he’d put on a ton of weight since waking up and throwing himself into training, which probably gave his tolerance a bump. Kakashi could do the same, if he would just eat more, but the thing with prodigies is they get bored quickly, especially with repetitive tasks like eating and weight training. 

The junkie from 116th Street who everyone called Drongo arrived nose-first, with sketchy gifts. He traded something with Asuma in a flash of slapping palms and butting shoulders. In almost the same motion he produced another walnut-sized object from his sleeve and pitched it across the table, and while Obito was still wondering _why_ he would do something like that and whether he should catch or deflect the thrown object, Kakashi plucked it from the air with a lazy flick of his arm that didn’t surprise Obito at all. 

He really hoped the dealer didn’t get his name for his nose, but he knew an unfortunate chunin in the 1st Signal Brigade with a deformity in his hand whose name was Left, and, well. There wasn’t any wiggling out of that one. He also knew a girl called Purple who once saw a dragon wearing the face of her grandfather. And then there was the dude called Tiny; and the worst part about that one was just the fact that there wasn’t anything obviously _tiny_ about him. People called Kakashi all sorts of silly things, too -- but nobody bore the burden like _Flying Yardwaste_ , poor guy. 1st Platoon was tough. Nicknaming in the shinobi ranks, particularly among jonin and high-ranking officers, made Obito think _Tobi_ was something of a lucky break. 

There was another round of _doboroku_ on the drongo’s arrival.

“I’d like to dedicate, this -- “ the dealer paused to sneeze loudly into his crotch. All of his patchy dark layers bounced and for a moment they resembled ruffled feathers. “To my friend, Asuma -- ”

Kurenai looked on with a disapproving eye.

“Our Savior, the Mighty Swallow -- “ he continued, the glass teetering higher with each ridiculous title. “The Immovable Sovereign, King of the Leaf, Lord of the Flies -- “

Kurenai’s sidearms for the evening -- Yahagi, and the girl from Team Three -- caught wind of her veiled expression, and levelled their own silent assault on the exuberant junkie. The disapproval in the air weighed threefold and Obito shifted in his seat, glanced over at Raidō but he was giggling with Genma again; Anko was fully engaged with deshelling her shrimp; Guy had tears in his eyes, and even Asuma was oblivious, grinning ear to ear at his friend. Sarutobi had been unsinkable since his girlfriend arrived with her lovely waving hair and her posse of fly girls. Yahagi looked at Obito like something nasty on her shoe. The girl from Team Three never smiled.

“And, least of all,” the drongo was winding down but his _doboroku_ was almost slopping against the low ceiling. “Son of the Third.”

Anko snorted into her bowl and lifted her head to join in as he was immediately booed by about ten drunk jōnin. 

“Sit down!” she brayed. “No more titles!”

Chopsticks clattered to the table, napkins were thrown and Obito didn’t really think it was funny to take shots at the Hokage, either -- but then somebody farted and the girls looked around so venomous he found himself chuckling against his will. 

“Come on, man.” Asuma said finally, and order slowly restored. “Sit down, already.”

Drongo peered around one last time. You couldn’t really see much of him besides his face. A scar bit deep into his hairline. “Cheers, bro,” he finished, and threw the shot directly at the back of his throat. He shivered as he swallowed, _whoop_ ed dramatically in the afterburn. 

Obito looked into his cup. He’d lost count how many rounds they’d had, but he saw a glimmer of something inviting and kindly in the sake’s milky depths -- treated it gently on the uptake, and felt it settle in his belly like a river of light. 

“Excuse me -- ” 

It was one of the two baldies from the youth club. Obito remembered their names because he thought they were kind of odd: Guy introduced them as Thinbone and Tether. Odd, but, then again, there was Guy, and Obito’s homie Scarecrow -- so. 

Tether seemed the more outspoken of the two. “What is the meaning of, _Lord of the Flies?_ ”

Obito thought how you either looked really young after shaving your head or really freakin’ old.

“That’s a long story,” Asuma chuckled. “Was that our chunin days?”

“Uh-huh.” The drongo grinned and bobbed his head. 

“Satun Province, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Kurenai rolled her eyes as if she’d rather take a raincheck on another one of Asuma’s stories, and shared a glance with Yahagi as if to say _this is exactly what I was talking about._ Yahagi tossed her heavy braids over one shoulder. The girl from Team Three lifted her cup to her lips.

“Satun?” Anko took the bait. “What were you guys doing out in _Satun_ Province? It’s just a big desert.”

“It’s the biggest desert in the Fire Country.” Drongo said. “But it’s not empty.”

“The gig was C-rank,” said Asuma. “Escorting some weaponry to a firebase in the boonies. Got there alright, but our return shipment was delayed -- we were hung up in the desert a couple days waiting on orders.”

Obito didn’t even know Drongo had enlisted. And he wasn’t taking missions now, which could only mean he was discharged. Why? Obito wondered. The dealer was youngish, still. Twenty, three or four, or something; no visible injuries, besides the scar on his head, but if that got you discharged and a pension then Obito would be rolling in disability checks.

“The village was dead -- ” Asuma paused to light another cigarette. 

“Nothin’ but wrinkled faces,” Drongo added. “War-tired old town. Everyone haggling over bamboo and sugarcane -- ducks and sparrows.”

“The village was dead, but,” Asuma continued. Smoke gathered under the low ceiling. “We heard some interesting rumors about the rock apes.”

“Rock apes?” said Obito. Kakashi snuffled. Obito wiggled his fingers under the chain around his roommate’s knee. He was interested, damn it. “What’re those?”

“Desert people,” the patchy dealer winked. “They control a resource in the desert that is _most_ expensive.”

“What sort of resource?” Anko scoffed. “Cactus juice?”

“Well, actually, it’s a sort of… toad.”

“A _toad._ ” Kurenai sighed.

“A sacred toad.” Asuma corrected. 

Drongo sneezed again. “Uh-huh!”

“How does a toad survive in the desert?” said Raidō. 

“Same way as a giant sand-worm,” Genma answered, grim. “Underground, probably.”

“Uh-huh!”

“That’s, ridiculous,” Kurenai decided.

“The townspeople told us the toads only come to the surface one month of the year,” said Asuma. “You guys know the maps; Satun is all crystalline deposits and acid flows -- arsenic pollutes the land and heat makes it almost impossible to cross on foot. But once a year, the valleys fill up with run-off from the rains. The toads wake up from hibernation and live a whole lifetime in just a few weeks -- ”

“They sing; they eat; they fuck!” 

Asuma continued at an easy, deliberate pace above his comrade’s interruptions. He liked an audience. “The rock apes come out around the same time to harvest them. For some sacred rite, I think, I don’t know. They’re an old warrior community, don’t like outsiders too much -- ”

Drongo brandished his chopsticks and snarled: “They wear belts strung with their victims’ left ears!”

Anko laughed once and clapped in exhilaration. Obito was buzzed enough that the dual-part storytelling was sort of amusing. 

“And it just so happened,” said Asuma, the corner of his mouth upturned. “We arrived in town on the last day of the rainy season. It was too good a shot not to take. We stocked up for the trip home, stashed it, and took a couple days C-rations and our poncho tents into the brush -- ”

“You actually went _out_ there?” said Raidō. Even Genma was grimacing but it was probably just the reminder of his mother’s squad, and their recent brush with death in the sands of Satun. 

“Why would you do something like that.” Kurenai deadpanned. “You knew they hated outsiders.”

“Babe -- we didn’t go looking for the rock apes,” Asuma implored. “We just wanted to catch a toad.”

“But _why?_ ”

The king hesitated. “Uh -- ”

“For the _high_ , of course!”

An eruption of confusion followed the drongo’s words. The youth club appeared equal parts disturbed and amused. Kakashi shifted minutely but Obito was focused completely on the odd pair’s unravelling tale. 

“There was a rumor going around 1st Platoon,” said Asuma into the following uproar. “Apparently milk of the desert toad is a pretty hard psychedelic -- ” 

“It’s the _most_ hard psychedelic known to man.” Drongo folded his wings over his chest, irreverent and proud.

Obito glanced into the shimmery remains of _doboroku_ in his cup. “Toads make _milk?_ ”

“Toxin,” said Genma. “It’s toxin, probably. To keep off predators.”

“They store it in their warts.”

“So,” Anko said, and she broke down their story with both hands. “You guys went into a _grade four_ biohazardous desert -- looking for psychoactive _wart_ milk.” 

“Uh-huh!”

“We made it about nine klicks before running out of water.” Asuma elbowed his former comrade. “We would’ve been fine if you hadn’t stepped in that fucking acid flow.”

“What’re you complaining for? I lost my favorite left boot!”

“It would’ve been your favorite left _foot_ if we didn’t kill the waterskin over it.”

“Yeah, thanks bud.” The dealer sighed, then grinned. “Wouldn’t mind seeing a disability check in the mail these days, though. Know what I’m saying?”

Kurenai sighed heavily. Obito suppressed a smile, because it sounded like exactly the dumb shit he’d get his ass whipped for. Kakashi would’ve let the acid take a couple of toes, first, just for the learning experience. 

“We were twenty-six hours in, and,” Asuma paused, made a little _pup_ sound on a quick drag of his cigarette. He considered the burning end. Then: “Shit was looking _weird_ out there.”

The drongo cackled. 

“Weird how?”

“The horizon,” Asuma continued at leisure. “Was coal black. Never seen a sun so big in my entire life; it was like a tunnel of light, beating down on us, dragging us in. You can’t tell night from day out there because that tunnel never goes away -- sometimes I thought I saw the moon rising, but it was just wraiths in the rock deposits, like bare light bulbs always bobbing in the corner of your eye. The ground kept burping up these giant, yellow-green geysers. Everything on my far right and left flank just -- blurred. Then the fool over here collapsed from acid fever. I mean, we were probably both dying, or something.”

“Okay, but,” Anko waved a hand. “Did you find the toad?”

“We found the rock apes first," Asuma chuckled. "Or, I guess they found me. Took a rock to the head two minutes into the fight. Most missed, but, I mean, they were pretty good shots.”

“Did they capture you? What did they say?”

“How’d you make it out with your ears?”

Asuma waited while the questions died down. “They didn’t say shit. Nothing I could understand, anyway. I woke up on the edge of a floodplain, sun-blistered and dehydrated, but uninjured. Shook off the flies and found a toad staring me in the face.”

“Rock apes took our supplies,” he continued. “All except the ponchos I used to wrap up Drongo -- like a fuckin’, dead body. He was still laying there, too -- uneaten, both ears attached -- they left us alive, but, in Satun, that’s never a very sure thing. I didn’t know how far we were from town, and I knew I couldn’t drag him all the way there, not without some water, at least. Abandonment is just a slower murder.”

“What did you guys do?”

Even Kurenai leaned in. She would deny it but everyone knew mischief got her high.

“First, we milked the toad.” Drongo declared.

Anko brought a hand to her forehead and groaned. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“How was it?” Raidō, with the more important question. 

“Like -- " Asuma exhaled long and slow. “Like opening a door you can never shut again.”

“It wasn’t a trip; it was a _journey_ ,” his companion nodded sagely. “The milk took us home, man. My fever split in the tangent universe, the wraiths taught me to walk upright again, and we all played _Go_ on the celestial plane -- ” 

“Okay, but what about _water?_ ”

“Ah,” the Drongo grinned. “The king’s brilliant idea. We ate the flies.”

“The… what?”

Asuma clasped his hands behind his neck, shrugged like it was no big deal. “The flies’ bodies filter acidity in the rainwater; they were probably the only source of freshwater for miles around, and Drongo’s stinking foot was drawing them in droves.”

“Makes ya wonder, you know, if the rock apes knew.” said the dealer, winking. “Maybe they led us to the valley in the shadow of death just to let the flies gather. Maybe they gave up the sacred toad to cure my acid fever.”

Kurenai looked unimpressed. “I think you two should stop smoking before bed.”

“Kurenai,” Asuma sighed while the table tittered. “I would say you’re judging weed off the rip, but -- we all know that isn’t true.” 

Here, he half-turned and knocked fists with Drongo. “If you wanna get to know the flower, you gotta have a _conversation_ with it first.”

“I already know everything I need to,” said Kurenai. “You had a paranoid episode over the _mail_ man this morning, honey.”

Asuma sighed again and rolled his shoulders under the strain of a world’s misunderstanding. “A great shaman once told me,” he said. “The beauty of pyschoactives, is in their ability to make you love the smallest things.”

Kurenai let the silence grow for a moment, then flicked her hair over one shoulder. “Are you calling me petty?”

Yahagi backed her up in her cynical drone. “I don’t think the _dron_ go qualifies as a great shaman.”

“Come on,” Drongo tried, hands spread like a peacekeeper. “Aren’t we all shamans, in a way? We can all heal.”

Kurenai wasn’t so dazzled by the king’s heroic deeds or his fool’s presentiments. “Why don’t you tell a nice story, for once?”

“Huh?” Asuma relaxed one arm behind her. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she hummed. “One without any death or dismemberment, or dissociative highs, maybe.”

“One without… ” Her partner appeared to think deeply about this. Then: “Have I told you guys the one about the tree on the hill that bleeds?”

His suggestion garnered immediate interest from some, but his girlfriend leaned over her opposite elbow and swore. “Gods.”

“What?” Asuma implored, and his sincerity was sort of heartbreaking. “Have I told you that one?”

“Why don’t you tell everyone about where you went this morning.”

“Huh? Oh.” Asuma dragged on his cigarette, stuttered a cough, and waited too long to continue. It was the most flustered Obito had ever seen him. “I, uh, went to the underground caverns, to -- ”

“To hide.” Kurenai helped him finish, her voice coaxing as it was ironclad -- like a mean genjutsu. 

“Okay, so,” said Asuma, withdrawing his arm. “Whenever _I_ lose track of time, it’s _hiding_ , but when _you_ do it, it’s just an elaborate ritual for getting _rea_ dy. What’s the difference if we’re both flaking on plans?”

“The difference is _effort_. You don’t see any wrinkles in _my_ silk.”

Kurenai was like Kakashi, Obito decided. In that she was talented, and beautiful, and she took her own time about things.

“I didn’t mean to miss the tea ceremony. I’m _sorry_.” Asuma tried. “I went to the underground caverns to meditate, but then, uh -- “

“You fell asleep down there, didn’t you?” Genma offered, idly spinning a chopstick.

“How did you know?”

The poison user looked slightly taken aback by the sudden intensity in the king’s gaze. He lowered the chopstick and shrugged. “It just seemed like something you would do, man.”

Asuma sighed, covered Kurenai’s hand guiltily with his own over the table. She didn’t move it, but she wasn’t looking very warm about it, either. “I’m sorry. We’ll do another tea tasting.”

Drongo sneezed into the chilly silence. Then: “The underground caverns are so dope. Ever since Tobi smashed the water shelf, tons of people are going there, even civilians. It’s a total rager -- “

“Dude -- “ Asuma groaned. Kurenai’s hand slipped away. An underground nap was much less incriminating than an underground party scene. 

“Last time I went,” Genma volunteered. “There were a bunch of vendors set up down there selling fruit and coconuts.”

“It’s a nice spot for street skating.”

The youth club started to volunteer their positive angles on Obito’s most recent slip of control, and he felt all the heat in his chest rise to his eartips. “I didn’t mean -- “ He began.

“Didn’t _mean_ to,” Yahagi’s voice mocked him above the clamor. “Why don’t you watch where you throw your fists, then?”

“Hey, no,” Asuma intercepted. “I think it’s great. People are having a good time down there -- “

“He sank an entire _ecosystem!_ ”

Obito stood and announced a desire to piss that probably went unheard in the group turmoil -- tripped over Raidō’s _bokken_ , fell nearly into Genma’s lap, and slapped his way free. 

He wasn’t really interested in anyone’s opinion on it, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbc


	16. holidays pt. 4

[holidays pt. 4](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/holidays-pt-4?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

“Imagine what the kid could do if he actually _meant_ it.”

“Or, if he rubbed two brain cells together.” That was Yahagi.

“Imagine if he got a few cousins in on it.” Raidō suggested.

“Sounds like the freakin’ apocalypse.” Genma’s senbon needle had rematerialized after the meal. “You couldn’t count his deranged, distant uncles on _two_ hands.”

“Uchihas, man.”

“Our friend Obito is clearly -- ” Guy threw his fist in the air. “In the throes of youth!”

Kakashi loosed a laugh that was abruptly elbowed to bits by the kunoichi at his side. “Ow,” he muttered, confused. 

Anko made furious eyes at him.

“What?” said Kakashi. “That was a good one.”

A commotion across the table drew his attention, but in the process of averting his glance he nearly toppled sideways. An incessant humming headache had set his conscious mind rippling; idle thoughts surged and subsided, and Kakashi peered around them like curtains. 

Drongo produced another object from under his patchy layers and offered it to Asuma. 

“Almost forgot,” said the dealer. “Check it out.”

It was a roll of paper about the thickness of a magazine, or a newspaper. Asuma unfolded the first page and flicked his eyes over its contents. He’d probably been drinking since sundown, but nothing ever really shook Asuma -- only the arrival of Kurenai and her fly friends seemed to put color in his cheeks. 

“New rag,” said the informant at his side. “There’s a few copies circulating the lower ring.”

“ _The Watertower_ ,” he rumbled. 

One way or another, Kakashi thought. Everything made its way back to the king. 

“Uh-huh! It’s about time this city got something to drink,” the drongo keened. “And the underground is _thirsty_ , man. I can feel it.”

A small crease formed in Asuma’s brow as he read. “Who else has one of these?”

His old comrade shrugged, made a show of brushing off one of his shoulders. “Around here? Just you an’ me, far as I know.”

“What is it, baby?” Kurenai leaned in, and she stroked her partner in a familiar way, the pad of her thumb under the fault of his jaw. It reminded Kakashi of the time Obito called him an ass and they made out. He narrowed his gaze on the empty spot next to him and a familiar resentment rose in his throat.

Asuma folded the paper again, leaned back and tucked it into his jacket. He smiled at his girlfriend, lopsided and genuine.

“Keep an eye out for these,” he told Drongo. “If you find anything else, old or new -- I want to see it.”

The dealer saluted.

Drongos weren't a very common bird in Konoha; they were native to the unsettled desert territories in the northwest, brought into the city by traders from the nearby Sand. The invasive species gradually made a home for itself in the capital, and the bird quickly became known for its rude habit of tricking people and predators out of their food -- mostly with charm and quick wit, but occasionally thru underhanded techniques like imitating alarm calls or infants' cries. Win the trust of a drongo, and it will bring you shiny things.

Another elbow dug into his side and Kakashi lurched into the gnawing discomfort of full awareness.

“Can I help you, Anko?” He muttered.

“No, Kakashi.” she said, lowly. “I’m here to help _you_. Do you not see somebody missing?”

“Yeah?” He shrugged. “So what? He had to piss.”

Anko docked her chopsticks over her bowl and crossed her arms. “It’s been kind of a while.”

“Maybe he had to shit.” It was like receiving light signals through a thick fog. He put all the dots together but they all still just looked like pretty lights. Had it been that long? Kakashi only remembered being jostled from a light doze a little while ago. 

The breeze off the patio was warm but left his skin feeling artificially cool. The stars could hardly squeeze a word in over the lights from the park.

“I think he got un _com_ fortable,” said the kunoichi on his other side. She would spell it out sooner or later, but she wasn’t going to be nice about it. “You need to _sober up_ , and go find him.”

“I am sober.” Kakashi tossed his head and regretted it. “I’m a fucking, ninja, man.”

“You’re a shithead,” said Anko, firmly. “I said I would be your support tonight, so listen to me. Stop giggling at cheap Uchiha jokes and _stand up_.”

Kakashi bottled his complaints and started to kick his feet back to the floor. Even if she wasn’t right, he decided he would show her how wrong she was. “I don’t giggle.”

“ _O_ -kay,” she rolled her eyes. “Go on, that’s a good boy. Stand your ass up.”

He was halfway to his feet when the table started careening sideways and he reached out to steady it. He wasn’t so think as Anko drunk he was. Hell no. Copy Nin on the move. 

“I’m not insensitive.” He informed her, starting to edge around. He could just body-flicker, probably, but didn’t want to risk flinging the table into the wall with any residual shockwaves from his enormous power. Oh well. White Wolf problems. 

“I didn’t say that,” said the kunoichi, pulling up her legs to allow him past, but she wore a shit-eating grin that shined unsettlingly through his fog.

Kakashi started back toward the center column, flicking aside about twenty hanging tapestries along the way. On the stairs his vision fluttered and shifted. He stuck his palm to the wall and swore -- but it was just his Sharingan. The wheel brimmed and burned with a life of its own, and wherever light arced Kakashi helplessly tracked it, let it beckon him, urge his body into lossless motion. It was like walking along a riverbed with the current in his favor. 

Asuma’s friend’s restaurant was a wild world. Some of the wall-hangings looked like doors, windows, terraces -- others were hiding whole mirrors behind them. At a certain point Kakashi began to wonder what the hell kind of hole he’d stumbled down -- and where did Asuma meet these people, anyway?

He blamed Anko’s seed of doubt when it occurred to him that Obito might’ve left. He might’ve just checked out, completely, and Kakashi might never fucking find him. Not really.

He found a stretch of rooms that appeared flooded, connected by corridors of narrow canals. He misstepped and for a second thought he’d plunge ankle-deep into the clear waters -- but everything was covered in glass, of course. It was jogging his memory, a little. He remembered this part, from the way in. 

There was movement in the air and Kakashi followed it, a curtain-sway fogginess in the back of his mind.

“B -- “ He cleared his throat. “B?”

He didn’t see anything and worst of all he couldn’t sense anything, and Kakashi was a good tracker. An excellent one, even. A tell-tale prickle coursed over his skin and he followed his bare intuition through the flooded rooms.

Fabric room partitions jostled with each other in the autumn zephyr. Night sky flickered between them. Kakashi banged his shin on a low table, and wondered why all his blood was in his extremities. His ears were hot, core feeling kind of dead and cold -- 

“Yo.”

 _Holy shit._ Kakashi startled internally but held his composure when his roommate appeared at knee-height beside him. _Appeared_ , out of fucking nowhere. Like he must have always been there, in his moody crouch, staring into the water -- but Kakashi hadn’t sensed him; in fact, he still couldn’t feel him, not really. It was like trying to catch a scent from just the shadow of something. 

He'd stolen his opening line, too, and Kakashi floundered for another.

“Hiding down here?”

“No,” Obito snapped. There were certain times the eyepatch was kind of sexy. “I got tired of Guy’s emotional wailing.”

“You mean,” Kakashi hummed. “You’re not in the throes of youth?”

His teammate snorted, crossed his arms over his knees and leaned his chin over them. “Doesn’t fuckin’ feel like it.”

The air stirred. Even under glass, with neither foreknowledge nor lettuce, koi collected at Obito’s feet; they were flickering by in twos and threes -- gold, white, some amber flecked in black. A gentle current flushed them along and some let it take them but others turned back, flipping their tails in the shifting water until milk-white wobbles rattled the crystal surface. And then _every_ thing wobbled: the glass, the curtains, the night sky where it leaned on the veranda. The park lights drowned out the stars. 

“You look like you're gonna cry, dude.”

“What?” Kakashi almost laughed. _Not a chance_ , his mind comforted him. 

Obito grew from his crouch like a dark flower, a hellfire of false torches under his feet, and Kakashi deliberately held eye-contact because he wasn’t backing down tonight. He was prepared to give _chase_ tonight -- fuck all the rest and whatever Anko said. 

Kakashi swore he remained perfectly still while the room wobbled, but he was still sorting it all out and sailing high seas when he realized his teammate was approaching and his Sharingan was spinning; he knew it from the mirror, the same distorted pupil: multi-pronged, elegant and knifelike, bedded in overlapping pleats of red silk. But, was it moving, counter-clockwise? 

A familiar hypnotic tug took up root in the back of his brain, and Kakashi idly watched it grow while he prepared for a fight. 

“I wanna show you something.” said the Uchiha.

He mustered a grunt.

“It’s been happening a lot, lately. But, I got an idea, from the fish.”

He was about to tell his teammate to get on with it, already, when the world rolled head over heels. The night reached up from the soil; the sky churned with turning fish tails -- and when Kakashi shut his eyes to quell the vertigo, everything went black. Advanced darkness, total void.

He’d blacked out before, but. He’d never been left with the impression that he was still standing, afterwards. 

Or blinking. Or feeling that he wasn’t alone. 

Slowly his mind caught up with his body’s predicament, and Kakashi blinked again.

A pale thin line marked a distant, but not endless horizon that divided the darkness in two. Smooth, prismic objects shaped the ground -- like buildings, but featureless and irregular. Kakashi looked down at the one he was standing on. It all seemed immature, like the very beginnings of thought, raw material half-realized and left lying around. _So dark_... he found himself thinking. It was so dark in here. 

“When I first found this place, there wasn’t any up or down. It was so confusing.”

The sky was like looking up from the bottom of a closed barrel. You got the feeling something was up there, waiting to crush you. 

Kakashi tracked the sound of his teammate's voice to a neighboring featureless block, but when he made a leap for it he flew way too high, and when his target was in sight he fell steep and fast like there were anchors on his feet. He landed with an uncharacteristic grunt of effort.

“Yeah,” Obito was saying. “Gravity’s gonna take a while to get a fix on. But hey, look at all these weird boxes here, now. At least there’s something to work with.”

“Obito,” said the Copy Nin, groggy. His stomach turned after the strange fall. “What the fuck?”

“Oh, sorry.” The hypnotic eye loomed close again and Kakashi searched it, trying to ignore his strange surroundings. What the hell kind of hole had he fallen down now? 

“K, this is a pocket dimension. I found it, um, inside my eye.”

“A dimension. Inside your… ?”

Kakashi considered the pale horizontal line in the distance. 

“That’s my working theory, anyway.” Obito scuffed at the surface of the block they were standing on. It didn’t really make any sound. "It’s finite, as far as I can tell. Closed space, single entry-point, and -- are you even listening? Hey, what are you... how are you doing that? Stop!”

 _It’s so dark,_ he thought, staring at the distant line. This was the inside of Obito’s head? Why was it so fucking dark?

Kakashi felt a tickle in his hindbrain -- ducked, side-stepped, and countered his teammate’s assault with a series of a movements like a memorized routine. 

“Stop!” Obito kept saying, but he didn’t understand why. Kakashi tapped the joint of his elbow when a fist came flying for him and stopped another in the heart of his palm. Obito threw a handless cartwheel over the hold and used the leverage to throw them both off balance. For a second, it thrilled him, and then Kakashi noticed the changes coming over the barrel sky. 

In the distance the same pale line was growing paler -- slowly devouring the dark with dour grays that faded finally to piercing white. And even when the surfaces of the pocket dimension’s building blocks shined like sun-bleached sand under a baking heat -- the sourceless light kept coming. 

His roommate was pissed and at a certain point, Kakashi stopped fighting back and let himself be borne to the ground. At a loss for what to do, he shut his eyes.

“Of course,” Obito muttered overhead, breathing heavily. “I fall in head-first twelve times before finding the _ground_ \-- and you come in here and start rearranging shit on your first try. If you _overwork_ it, the space will collapse on us and I’ll have to start from scratch.”

Kakashi remained still, breathing slowly and trying not to think too hard about _what_ he was breathing and _how_ \-- did he even need air, here?

“You can open your eyes, Bakashi.” Obito sighed. “Just don’t fuck with my stuff.”

When he slit his eyes open, the thick blanket darkness was back -- but almost as soon as he saw it, it started to pale again and Kakashi swore, determined to hold it together this time. He thought of the way light pollution from the park abused the night sky, flushed out its subtleties and did jealous battle with the stars -- and he forced himself to imagine a quieter time, after the torches burned down and the vendors moved on; the artificial neon glow of the streets got trapped under the city canopy and above them bolder stars would emerge, winking like lions’ eyes from the deep shadows. 

The sky warped jungle-like overhead, a brutal and despairing dark, spanned by a wild hunt of gas and vapor trails like blue-red veils drifting far above the atmosphere.

“You are such a fucking show-off.”

Muted blues and warm hues settled over his roommate like a thin veneer of smoldering sundown. Much better.

“You’re -- pretty good, too.” 

Obito’s demonic eye rolled spectacularly, then turned away from Kakashi to consider the new sky. “Pretty good,” he muttered. “Adjacent universe contained _in_ side my eyeballs. _Pretty good, B_. What’s it take to impress this guy.”

Kakashi’s little buzz slushed behind his eyes, and he remembered he was still on his fucking back. He sat up. The mental shock of beaming his physical form into an adjacent reality with totally different rules and boundaries started to slip away; the presence of his teammate and his moodiness drew him slowly back to normalcy, and finally, Kakashi processed his words. 

“In your... eyes?”

“Yeah, so. I mean -- I think you must have one of these, too. Or, something like it.”

“How do you know?”

Obito lifted one hand behind his head, and Kakashi hoped he wasn’t pulling out his fucking hair, anymore. “I don’t know. I’m not really the right person to ask. All the literature about our dōjutsu -- the history, techniques, and abilities -- everything is archived in the Uchiha compound. I’m not going back there. And I’m not exactly, you know. A natural.”

“Hm.”

Kakashi settled again on the undisturbing fact that he and his old teammate were linked by fate. 

“It’s a good thing we’re on the same side,” Obito was rambling. “Because, you know, it would probably be really inconvenient otherwise, sharing all this shit with you.”

“Yeah. It could be worse.” Some of his resentment returned and Kakashi stood his ass up in his teammate's weird prism world. He stuck the soles of his feet to the ground with chakra. “I could be Genma.”

Obito turned, slid his goggles down over his face, for some reason, and he grinned at him, the lunatic. “Let me rephrase that -- ”

“I'm glad we share this, because, I just realized,” he paused, nodded to himself. “I’ve spent some of the best days of my life with you, K.”

The thready burn of something watery chaotic was seeping in at the corners of the landscape; Kakashi had been tracking it long before they sensed its approach. Obito’s nostrils flared, and he came within striking distance again. 

“What are you doing?” He said lowly. “What’re you doing _now?_ ”

Kakashi shook his head. The small movement, like the rest of his conscious mind, seemed sluggish and unthought. What was he doing? He really didn’t know. 

Dark water rushed into the pocket space, leveling the gaps between Obito’s building blocks, making seas and islands where before there had only been crags and shadows. Everywhere the bloodflood rose or fell it displaced the stale air, and a wind picked up until it was whipping over the smooth prismic surfaces and ripping the breath from their lungs. Kakashi was going to suffocate on his own ocean. 

The next instant blurred in a moment of impact and he opened his eyes back at the restaurant. The familiar laws of physics slid into place around him -- the dusty colors and hues of the restaurant by the south gate seemed suddenly exquisitely arranged. Tall curtains gestured to each other in the autumn breeze; koi flickered by under the glass; and the infinite night leaned in around them. 

“You should drink something that isn’t doboroku,” Obito advised, and he seemed to be trying to comfort him, which was odd. Kakashi had just destroyed his space. 

“Wanna go back to the crib?” He suggested.

Obito snorted. “It sounds like you’ve wanted to go home all night.”

Kakashi lifted his shoulders in what felt like slow-motion, and he realized his eye had deactivated. “I have a headache.”

“No, shit,” he iterated slowly. “Is that why you punched a hole in my pocket dimension and then flooded it, you inconsiderate ass?”

“Wanna make out?”

“Nah, I don’t think so -- " Obito ranged in, single eye wide and salamander-like under his orange lenses. "Know why? Because it takes some pretty messed-up mental majilla to pull off something that big in a space that’s _not yours_ \-- so what is it, man? What’s going on in your head?”

Kakashi cleared his throat. “Why d’you look at fish all the time?”

After a moment of silence his teammate turned his murderous gaze to the floorside pools. He lifted one hand and ruffled it under his shirt. Just to drive him wild, probably. 

“Fish have different rules.” he said at last. “For a minute there, I thought of my blackouts like, just jumping into another kind of water.” He tongued at the corner of his mouth. “That was the only way to wrap my head around it, anyway. That pocket didn’t used to be anything at all -- just, emptiness. I had to put together all the rules of reality from the ground up. That’s why the gravity’s still kind of screwy. It was harder than I thought -- like organizing my mind, kind of.”

“I thought you might just have a thing for fish.”

Obito’s gaze snapped back around. “Shut up! What do you care? They’re all over the fucking place -- I can’t help _look_ ing at them!”

“Yo, relax -- I really don’t care.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, but it actually sounded like he meant it, halfway. “I think, people used to say that to me a lot.”

Kakashi read between the lines. “Lots of… rock gardens, in the Uchiha compound?”

“Some,” he grit. “Why d’you wanna fight all the time?”

That was too easy, compared to all the other stuff he’d been asking. “You turn me on.”

Obito dropped his eye and toed at the shoreline between wood flooring and glass. “You’re drunk,” he concluded. 

Kakashi sighed. _Annoying_. 

“No -- “ His mood shifted again. “An _noying_ is wrecking my _space_ when I invited you in there as a _guest_ , motherfucker.”

“My bad,” he admitted. “Wanna go back to the crib?”

“ _My bad_ ,” he murmured. Obito’s eye darted around and back to him. “Asuma probably has about ten-thousand more things planned.”

“I don’t care.” Kakashi decided it would be fine to touch him. They were partners, after all. And if Kurenai and Asuma could do all that small intimate shit out in the open, then surely he could fold his fingers over Obito’s hips in a strange, empty room. It didn’t feel so empty at all, actually, with all the waving tapestries and googly-eyed koi fluttering around. “We can ride around the park any other day. He’ll understand.”

“I knew you weren’t as social as you pretend to be.”

Kakashi needed to clear his throat but he didn’t wait to do it. “Maa, Obito. It sounds like _you_ wanna fight.”

He half-expected the rush that followed -- his teammate ducked his head under his arm in a tackle, drive, and lift maneuver that began most of their scuffles, and Kakashi prepared to roll over his back like he always did -- but he wasn’t prepared for the abrupt manipulation of physics that followed: the burst-crumple of dimensions folding over one another, an immense stretching sensation like his ribs coming apart -- 

Kakashi hit the wall of his apartment in a way that shook his brain around, and fell flat-backed to the floor for the second time that day, a split second before the impact of another body hit him with the momentum of a two-story fall. He took a knee to the leg that fell blessedly short of his groin, and an elbow struck him low over the chest. Kakashi’s liver wheezed. 

“Did you just _warp_ us home?”

Obito unshyly detangled his limbs, and planted his palms on the floor. “I, uh, changed the curvature of space to make a tunnel, I guess.” He shoved himself to his feet. “I need to work on it some more.”

Kakashi narrowed his eyes on the ceiling. _That’s awesome._

He sat up but had to take a breather against the wall when a wave of nausea washed over him. He decided there should be rules against dimensional diving after a few drinks. Kakashi had the spins so bad he could see time, and it was backpedaling circles around him on a unicycle. Playing the flute. No, forget the flute -- that was music from the park.

The walls of the apartment were concrete neatly disguised in a thin layer of pockmarked plaster. Kakashi turned his shoulder into the wall, then his cheek. Nice and cool. Even with all the windows closed, air recycled noticeably down the hall from the porch. Obito forgot his socks on the laundry line last week and they’d swelled up in the rain, and shriveled in the sun. Street lamps and passing demon lanterns sent slashes of gold and bronze light gliding over the wood. There were a few spiders here and there, but, all things considered, life on the low end wasn’t bad. 

Another sound was butting in on his trance and Kakashi shifted his head, confused. 

“ -- _hey_. You want this?” it was saying. “It’s just hot water. Do you want it?”

Kakashi eyed the steaming mug, then the hand outstretched to him. It had taken his roommate all of two seconds back in the apartment to throw off his sweater. Did he want that? 

“Hm,” he decided. Hell yeah he wanted that.

The Uchiha forced the mug into his hands. “Genma was right,” he mused. “This is pathetic.”

Kakashi narrowed his eye over the steaming rim. “I’ll make you eat those words, in a minute.” He promised, unprimed and rasping. “Then, I’ll take you across town -- squeeze you till you throw up, and Shiranui and his mom can eat them, too. _Unh_ \-- fuck!”

“I told you it was hot.”

Obito rose and padded away, which was a good thing -- Kakashi didn’t need to be _nursed_ \-- but for a minute he sat and sipped his water against the wall. And it helped, actually.

After a shower, he pitched his street clothes into a corner of his room and sank down cross-legged in the comforting wellspring of blankets from last night. His stomach stopped turning, his vision was straight, and he wasn’t really worried about anything. 

Then, Kakashi remembered he had a roommate. And they shared a space, now. 

He stared at his back a whole minute before he noticed it. Even slid up behind him, tested their bodies together before it really came to him. 

“Your bark-burn,” he murmured. “It’s gone.”

“Unh,” his roommate grunted, uninterested. “It healed?”

“No, it’s gone.”

The sound of a yawn. “K. That time-space stuff takes some juice. I’m tryna sleep.”

Kakashi settled for an instant. That’s right. Obito had been tired at the be _ginning_ of the night. And two advanced time-space techniques on top of that -- his chakra stores weren’t just bigger, it was almost like, they were growing. 

Kakashi propped himself on one elbow and traced the line of his teammate with his eyes. He shook his head till his mask fell and felt himself careening down a familiar thought pattern; this was _his_ apartment, _his_ room -- 

“Too bad,” he decided. “You played a public boyfriend card today. It’s time to pay the toll.”

A gruff laugh. “Is _that_ how it works?”

“Yeah. And there’s a crawling into my bed unannounced toll, too. I’ve let you rack up a lot of those.”

Obito’s skin burned and Kakashi breathed it in, forced his belly against the curve of his back and dropped his hand to his hip. “You can pay me a little at a time, or, all at once -- ”

“Dude -- ”

As his teammate clamped down on a loud half-breath he took the opportunity to slide his hand inside the soft cradle of his pelvis. “Sound fair?”

“Fucker!” Obito hissed. “You said you wouldn’t do this!”

“I’m not even touching you.” But Kakashi dragged three fingers over the line of his waistband and prepared to. “And besides, you liked it so much the first time. Now you don’t have to hide it.”

His teammate turned his face away, uttered a dry chuckle. “Yeah, not anymore, I guess.”

Obito seemed to be tipping onto his belly, perhaps to curl away from his touch, but that only made it easier to press up against his back, which was exactly where Kakashi wanted to be. He'd just driven the pads of his fingers down past the boundary of clothing and entered the bed of coarse, wiry hair between his teammate's legs when he paused, and considered his last words.

“Hey,” Kakashi began, suspicious. “That was the first time, right? You never got hot around me before, right?”

“Does it matter?” he grumbled. Then: “Haven’t you ever got an erection after a good fight?”

Kakashi considered this. “Obito -- are you bullshitting, right now?”

“No,” he muttered. His voice went from irritated to doleful and small. “Remember the fight we had at Kakyuu Bridge?”

“On the yellow river, yeah,” Kakashi remembered. He’d said some pretty horrible stuff, that day. They both had. “But, we were _twelve._ ”

“Yeah, so?” His teammate challenged, with the slightest movement of his hips. “That's totally natural -- I was, growing -- ”

“That’s why you didn’t let me help you up.” It dawned on him. “I thought you hated me!”

“I did hate you!” Obito snarled. “It was a really confusing day for me.”

“You stood around in that fucking river all _night_ , dude -- I got a cramp hiding in the trees. It looked like you were having an existential breakdown.”

“Nope,” he sighed. “Just, you know, forcing down a boner.”

Kakashi almost laughed. He tugged his hand out of his roommate’s pants just to wrap both arms around his torso and push his face into his neck. “I knew it. It turns you on. You want to fight me all the time.”

“ _You’re_ the one who always starts it,” said Obito, darkly. “Ever since you sabotaged my chair with that red _jello_ cup when we were five. What kind of sick fuck _does_ something like that?”

Kakashi drew his hand over his abdomen, unreservedly picked out his favorite lines through his teammate’s scars. He hummed, happy. “Are you still hung up about that? Look before you sit.”

“It was humiliating,” Obito spat, and he actually started to elbow him away. “You knew I was trying to make a good impression on Rin!”

Kakashi gave up on the cool guy strategy and rolled back to his side of the mat, rested the crook of his elbow over his eyes and huffed his annoyance, but he wasn’t really sober enough to be evasive. “ _Five_ years old,” he reminded him. "I just wanted you to notice me.”

His roommate barked a laugh and Kakashi lifted his arm to see him shift around, prop himself on one elbow and look over, amused. He wanted to be noticed, but mostly, Kakashi thought, he wanted Obito to smile at him.

“Hey -- ” He curled his back in a small, inviting way. “Did it work?”

Obito rolled his eye but his mouth split sideways. "Dumbass."

It must’ve worked because his teammate's shadow fell over him. He let his knees fall apart, was shifting his elbow from over his face when a hand clamped around it; Obito dragged the heat of his palm up the underside of Kakashi's arm until their fingers intertwined, then leaned his weight over it to pin him there. His other hand flicked at the bottom of his shirt; cool air hit his belly an instant before the deliberate scrape of another burning palm. 

Silver chainlinks pooled in the hollow of his throat as the Uchiha leaned close and Kakashi waited, parted his lips, tasted his name on his tongue. 

But he hovered there just a second too long, and the Copy Nin slipped, snapped his teeth over his lip and forced their mouths together, curled his free arm around his teammate’s neck and dragged his nails across the flat between his shoulder blades. 

“Unh,” Obito muttered. “Why’re you so rough?"

Kakashi turned his head to the side to measure out a few even breaths. He shifted his back again in the blankets, flexed his trapped fingers, and made an immense effort to relax.

His teammate knocked his nose against his cheek. “It’s okay,” and he said the words Kakashi had been reaching for all night. “Don’t stop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more dishevelled k plz


	17. late nights pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much love in my inbox, thank you guys^^
> 
> this chapter has nothing to do with love.  
> 12 pages of sin, folks  
> buckle up
> 
> some shoopy art for u this time  
> im planning a bigger full color piece for the next installment~

  


Obito never imagined two small words could possibly set his roommate _loose_ , but -- that’s the only way he could describe what happened. 

Kakashi didn’t play fair to begin with. 

What was all this _notice me_ horse crap? Nobody with two holes above their nose could _not_ notice the damn Copy Nin -- and that went double when he was laying around all shiftless and sexy with just a slice of pale navel on display -- Obito couldn’t compete with that. He’d been ignoring it all damn _night_ until he literally _fell_ on top of it after his haphazard dimensional travel experiment. 

His roommate had tottered around doing drunk little things for an hour, almost, after they got back. He went to the door and kicked all their shoes into a line, laid out the orders for tomorrow’s mission on the table -- occasionally he slammed his hand against a wall and looked around intensely, as if a damn five-nine _earth_ quake was rocking the pad. Finally, Kakashi started the water in the bath, promptly after putting the tea kettle in the fridge.

Didn’t bother to close the stupid screen door, either, which Obito didn’t think anything of -- because the screen was _stupid_ and bathing in their apartment didn’t exactly paint an enchanting or seductive scene -- but when Obito slid past the open door on the way to the bedroom, the tubes attached to his nuts tightened like he was lifting something heavy.

Shortly, the water shut off, and Kakashi’s elbow banged against the doorframe on the way into his room. He spun with the hit, shot his clothes onto the desk chair in the corner, and rolled neatly into bed all on the same beat. He was really fucking something. 

There was somebody like Kakashi in every generation -- the student picking out flaws in textbook stratagems before anyone else could figure out which way to hold the book, kicking ass and taking names before he was out of baby teeth -- and it was a little different for Obito, that person being his fresh friend and teammate and all, but not any easier on the ego. 

He watched him meditate, for a while. It felt like the only time he got a break from the scrutiny, himself, so naturally he turned the tables whenever he got the chance. After a few deep breaths and a single concerted rise and fall of his shoulders, Kakashi went still. 

This was when his roommate sorted out his mental socks and underwear, Obito theorized. All the shit that he dodged around and white-lied about all day probably got stashed deep in some secret brain drawer, hidden away from everyone, including himself. It was a tactic for withstanding interrogation that they only taught in certain special skills classes offered to elite nin; for it to work, you had to convince yourself that even _you_ don’t have the information your enemy is looking for. The tricky part was storing the key codes to unlock those memories and retrieve them again; the keys had to be hidden in plain sight, in grocery lists or random word sets -- patterns of the mundane. Obito heard a rumor in 1st Platoon about a shinobi who used this technique to withstand over a hundred days of imprisonment during the Second World War; by the time he was released along with a group of POWs in his regiment, the guy had nearly lost his self-identity to gruesome torture -- but he never yielded to questioning, and he recovered all of his hidden military knowledge from the smell of cut grass outside. 

The body will survive at all costs -- but the brain can be rewired. The soldier can be taught to give up living for the sake of society, duty, the greater good. 

Obito didn’t pretend to understand it all. 

He had finally rolled away from his quiet teammate, out of the daze of blankets on the floor, and taken his own turn with the hose in the bathroom, hoping the warm water would last long enough to wash off his surface layers of sweat and mountain dust. Fragments of needle, pine and cedar, fell from his hair, and the bodies of a couple jute flies stuck to the drain in the floor. 

One shower in the 200 square feet of concrete they shared made it foggy-day humid inside for hours -- two in a row and everything he touched felt damp and muggy, even the towels. Obito dried off the best he could but even when his skin and scars had cooled he felt a precursor to the shakes lift the hair on his arms.

A gigantic moth with eyes on its wings was feeling around the wall outside the bedroom. A small bug-eyed gecko went scrambling up after it. Obito pulled the door shut after himself.

Kakashi had clearly left his body behind in the material plane, and Obito thought how, if anybody was gonna be levitating three feet off the ground around here, it was his fucking roommate in meditation land. You couldn’t snap him out of it with anything short of a threat on his life. 

Once, Obito saw him meditating without his mask -- and he didn’t wonder about the mask thing anymore after that, because people probably wouldn’t take Kakashi seriously without it, not after setting eyes on his contemplative pout. 

He shuffled his way under the blankets beside him, narrowing his eye on the Copy Nin’s seated, motionless form. _Cute-ass motherfucker,_ he’d decided, and turned away. 

Obito was exhausted. They had a burdensome _away_ mission coming up tomorrow morning, and he didn’t like the sound of taking off with the added weight of sleep-deprivation and whatever beast-form his teammate’s hangover might take. Missions during the holiday were rare but usually time-sensitive -- Kakashi would be riding him about it whether he had a headache or not. 

But eff it all if he hadn’t been sort of waiting for him to snap out of it and slide up along his back. 

All Obito had meant to say was no need to stop making _out_ \-- but at the two-word suggestion, his teammate changed his drift, bit, snapped, and bucked until Obito was pouring half his effort into keeping him restrained. He wanted to try some things, too, but it was impossible to do anything at all with the dude slopping his tongue over his ear, clawing up his unmarked side. One of his fucking legs swung around, even, and Obito felt the sole of Kakashi’s foot on his ass, trying to shove down his shorts -- _Dirty motherfucker,_ he decided, taking the swinging knee and curling it under his arm. When he tried lifting his shirt Obito caught him by the wrist. Suddenly he was, fucking, overheating. 

“Kakashi -- ” Obito tried, thinking maybe it was like renkei ninjutsu and communication was key, but the Copy Nin seemed to take his name as encouragement, settled his free hand high on Obito’s throat and nipped his way shark-toothed to the corner of his jaw.

“You’re,” Kakashi hummed lowly. He didn’t sound out of breath, but there were long pauses between his words. “ _Stopping_ , me.”

“Could you just -- ”

Obito was silenced by an open-mouthed kiss that lasted just long enough to be noisy on his departure, and before he could squeeze another word in Kakashi surged forward and did it again.

He wouldn’t be getting anywhere with words, obviously, and he didn’t know what else to do except play the game.

Obito initiated a third crash of their mouths with a bad angle that Kakashi quickly corrected, and tiptoed his tongue over his bottom lip -- got a little shy when his roommate’s lanced out to meet it, but held his ground for the sake of Uchihas everywhere -- then, Obito gave in to the bizarre sensation of having the underside of his tongue stroked. 

Eventually he freed his roommate’s hand, brought his own to the side of his neck, and ventured to push his fingers into the tangle of silver hair behind his ear. Still slightly damp, limp and oilless from his shower -- it curled and clung and caressed and it was even better than Obito imagined. Kakashi’s hands travelled down his chest as if on recon -- halfway down Obito’s abdomen they paused, and he broke away with a sharp inhale. 

“These are okay, right?” said Kakashi, brushing lightly over his scarred side. “None of them hurt anymore.”

Obito took much longer to process than was necessary, then shook his head. It was the first time he’d asked.

“You tell me if something’s not good, alright?”

Obito hummed. He was zeroing back in on the mole under the corner of his mouth when a sudden agony struck him like a lightning bolt over the web of nerves in his chest. He released the clamp he still held on his leg to clap a hand over his nipple. 

“Uh- _huh_ ,” he grit. “That’s not good. Don’t do that again.”

Kakashi shifted his grip to the nape of his neck and used it to draw him closer. “I was testing you.” He said, and both knees rose to trap him on the sly.

The fourth time around, Obito tried actually engaging Kakashi’s tongue with his own. He knew the inside of his own mouth so intimately, it was strange behind enemy lines; he got to know the new territory in brief, tentative pulls, adjusting each time to the taste of his breath, the cut and turn of his teeth. As usual, whenever they crossed paths they wrestled -- just, a little more gay, this time, and way more spit. After a couple of rounds Kakashi went sort of limp beneath him and Obito pulled guiltily away, afraid he got a bit too into it. His roommate blinked at him, eyes bright and wild, his lips gone kind of pink and swollen --

When he wasn’t slicing arteries, snapping heads and small digits, Kakashi was the prettiest most delicate thing since, freakin’, _sun_ rise over the misty mountains. 

“I’ve, um,” Obito shifted to allow them some breathing room. He was cooling down, slowly, watching the irregular shudder and lift of his teammate’s chest. On the cusp of his next inhale Obito reached out and cupped the small inward slope of his lower rib cage in his hands. “Never seen you drink.”

It took him forever to answer the implicit question. His throat moved, and Kakashi turned his head to the side to fake a cough. Obito got the impression he was switching gears, or something. 

“I wanted to zone out.” He roughed finally. His voice had changed a lot since Kannabi Bridge but something of the idle boyish timbre remained, and Obito hoped it would linger.

“Yeah, but why?”

“You _know_ why,” the Copy Nin grumbled, lifting one hand to rub at his eye. “Shinobi shit.”

He’d thought about it before, endlessly, and already had a response prepared -- but it all seemed to hit hard and fast for some reason, and Obito felt all the mechanics in his chest stop working at once. 

“I understand, that, sometimes,” he began, with effort. “There are things you can’t say. But, I know at least some of them you’d just rather not. So I guess I’ve been wondering, a few things -- ” Obito tried for a deep breath, it arrived in pieces. “Can I still trust you? And, also -- ”

He was in the process of leaning back onto his heels when his teammate shot up and reeled him back in with an arm around his neck. Not too kindly, either -- his bicep was squeezing the air out of Obito’s windpipe. 

Then Kakashi forced their heads together and said a very disturbing thing that was not romantic at all into his ear: “Everyone else can burn.”

It dawned on him that there were broad differences between kindness and intimacy -- in fact, the two might not be related and all. Obito didn’t bother voicing his second question about whether or not Kakashi was in danger, and did he want help on his secret mission, because he was abruptly more concerned for the welfare of his enemies. And curious who and _what_ -how could piss off his old teammate in such short order. Most things didn’t matter enough to Kakashi to warrant a death-sentence, or hatred. Or, if he was really reading this right -- fear.

Obito clamped both hands over his roommate’s sides and wormed his way out of the headlock, sitting up on his heels to survey him. His shirt was shoved up past his elbows at this point but Obito didn’t let him take it off -- partly for the frustrated look this earned him, and partly because, in his experience, K-dot without a shirt on was going to kill somebody and make it look sexy; partially unravelled he was still hot, and not half as scary. Obito’s gaze drifted. 

Soft, sun-shy and beauty-marked, Kakashi’s tum had never done any wrong; it was a bed of unspoken innocence hidden at the core of a killer, and finding it had literally been the turning point in his considerations about dating the fucker.

“B -- ”

He never finished what he had to say. Like before, his teammate tensed and kicked his heels. Obito reached his hands underneath him and sunk his tongue into his belly button in several slow pulls. Then he probed at the rim, sucked on the thin skin of the upper crest while it cooled. A twisted, mid-pitched noise rose in the back of Kakashi’s throat. Obito clipped his way upward and, on an exploratory whim, walked teeth and tongue over the shallow grooves of his abdomen. 

The saying goes that a good chef doesn’t get burned -- and the same went, more or less, for shinobi. Despite being symbols of experience and hardship, not all nin looked at scars as being very good for their rep. It meant they’d slipped; they’d miscalculated. 

Kakashi wore very few scars -- some were glancing, others more hideous.

Obito eased his way back down to tease the skin around his belly again. He dug his thumbs inside his hip bones until his teammate squirmed, and was nosing along his waistband when he reached a thin scattering of hair inside the grooves of his pelvis. Without really thinking, Obito curled his hands in the loose fabric over Kakashi’s legs and tugged it down a few inches, far enough to confirm that yes, from the top of his head, to his eyebrows, pits and pubes, everything was varying shades of silver-to-white and, fucking, glorious. 

Obito tugged again and the band slid down enough for him to bury his nose in the thick grayish curls. He liked the way he smelled -- something indolic, kind of, floral. Not anything _bad_ , anyways. His gaze drifted again and Obito exhaled heavily over the grooves in his pelvis, tested the taut skin with his fingertips, then his teeth, and spent some time there before dipping his thumbs under the bands on both his shorts and sweats and sliding them down once more, far enough to free his erection. The first thing Obito noticed was a mole inside his left thigh. 

Finally, he made eye contact with his roommate.

Kakashi blinked at him. Mask rumpled around his neck, shirt gathered at his armpits. Obito preferred him like this.

“Uh,” he started again. “Is it okay, if, I -- ?”

“Anything,” the Copy Nin interrupted, kind of rasping and impatient. He cleared his throat. Then: “You can do, anything you want.”

Obito sat up on his knees, weighed his palms down over his teammate’s pelvis, and centered his weight over it.

They breathed into the dusky quiet. He wasn’t sure if he should _ask_ to blow him or if it was just one of those things that went without saying. He said _any_ thing, so --

“Um,” Obito glanced down, wet his lower lip. All the same, he figured a heads-up would be nice. He lifted one hand to his neck and shrugged out of his chain, deposited it beside the bed and made eye contact again. “I like your sword.”

Even Kakashi’s foreskin was pale and velvety soft. Obito palmed at him with one hand, exposing more of the darker head of his cock in a few strokes. Kakashi shuddered and kicked so responsively Obito had to sit up again and press his hands down over his legs. He was just shifting his hand back into a grip around his shaft when his teammate set his teeth into the wrist of one of his sleeves and whined. 

“What’s the matter?”

Kakashi glared like he’d asked something that was obvious ten years ago. “Your _hands_. They’re too hot.”

“They’re… what?”

“They’re leaking _chakra_ , idiot -- you can’t touch me!”

Obito turned over his palms and examined them. “Is my chakra control that bad?”

“ _What_ chakra control.”

Well, that sucked. Obito tested his hands against his own chest. “You sure?”

Kakashi exhaled through his nose, broke out his adolescent sass. “Ma-a. Did you think it was normal -- burning through so many toothbrushes and chopsticks every week?”

Obito nodded at his mismatched palms. He thought he just had a firm grip. “Now it makes sense. So that’s what’s going on. Huh.”

He couldn’t really feel the difference -- but it explained why Kakashi squirmed when he roughed his hands over his cool sides, and he enjoyed the passion in his eyes for a second while he did it. It was clear he’d have to change tactics, though, and he pinned his roommate again at the hips -- dipped his head, lapped once at the moisture beading at the head of his cock, then dragged the tip of his tongue along the slit. 

“Obito,” a strained murmur. 

He liked the way he tasted. It wasn’t like anything bad, anyway.

“Don’t pull my hair,” Obito warned, before dipping back down. He took the tip into his mouth, pulled off, made a sleigh with his tongue over his bottom teeth, and tried again. Competing ripples of tension swarmed his teammate’s skin and he seemed to shiver beneath him. When the curly hair at the base of his cock was tickling his nosetip, Obito lowered himself to his forearms and sucked on him a few tries without moving his head. 

The reaction was immediate, so foul-mouthed and so intense that Obito reversed direction -- risked looping one finger and thumb around him and pulled all the way off. 

Obito wiped his mouth on his forearm and swallowed around the peculiar memory. He chuckled a little nervously. “Are those good tears, or bad tears?”

Kakashi lifted his teeth from his sleeve and made a valiant effort to scowl. “Shut up.”

Obito doubled the grip around the base to two fingers, dragged the ring upward and watched his hips twitch forward like he was under restraints. “B,” said the Copy Nin, and Obito could stand to hear his name moaned more often. “Keep going, man. Please.”

“Yeah? Okay.” He recentered himself, dropped his palms over his pelvis. “You’ve got this mole down here, inside your leg. Feels like it’s looking at me.”

He heard the roll of his eyes in just the sound of Kakashi’s exhale. “They’re all looking at you.”

“Gods -- ” Obito swore, feeling light. A nervy giggle bubbled forth. “How many are there?” 

“ _Obito_ ,” Kakashi seemed to swear back, murderous even when flushed. 

“Okay, I’m going.” He pushed down on his hips again, shifted his shoulders, glanced back up. “It’s hard to go all the way down.”

“You don’t have to go all the way down,” Kakashi informed him quickly. He sat up, and for a second his abs looked scary cut while he flexed -- but then his back curled and Obito smiled at the way his stomach wrinkled. Kakashi seized him by the outer conches of his ears. Blood rushed to his face. 

“You really don’t want to kiss me right now,” he warned. 

“I really do.” Kakashi crashed into him open-mouthed, once, twice, swiped his tongue lazily over his bottom teeth, and withdrew. “Your hair’s not falling out,” he added, to Obito’s bafflement. “Let me pull. You’ll like it.”

“Uh. Uh-huh,” Obito stuttered, and squinted his eyes against the sudden pressure of ten fingers carving rifts over his skull. 

For some reason it made his blood pump and his adrenaline rush and Obito dug his thumbs inside the crests of his hips, shifted his shoulders and went down on his roommate again -- closing his lips briefly around the tip before sinking further along his shaft. He didn’t wait to reach the base this time before reversing direction, and in a couple of turns he found a rhythm. 

Kakashi persisted with occasional, impetuous rolls of his hips, but sometimes Obito simply let him -- and he knew his roommate appreciated this from the pleased noises in his throat. For the most part Kakashi bit down on his sleeve and grunted softly through the strain; his free hand combed through the longer spikes of hair at Obito’s crown and pulled, reservedly at first, then with purpose --

It was the kind of thing that took a decent amount of concentration, so in Obito’s amateur calculations pulling meant _good job_ and when Kakashi got really rough and _rea_ lly loud, he leaned over on his forearms again and swallowed the whole of him. 

Abruptly his teammate tensed, shuddered head to toe and Obito realized what was happening an instant before the back of his throat went suddenly wet and full and he reeled away, choking. 

“That’s what you were trying to say,” Obito laughed around his coughing and hiccups. He watched the Copy Nin work through his release with a snarl wrinkling his brow, and thoroughly enjoyed his teammate in his state of unwind. Obito wiped his mouth on his arm again and swallowed, very pleased with himself. He reached down to run his looped fingers over his dick once more, as it relaxed over his leg. Kakashi twitched knees to shoulders against the contact, and the heat, maybe. Obito cupped his rib cage in his hands while he panted. Then, his gaze drifted. 

The rest of Kakashi’s cum had covered his belly, and Obito surveyed the mess critically. He swept his thumb through one of the stripes and stuck it in his mouth. 

...It’d be a shame to let him dry sticky. 

“You don’t, have to -- ”

Obito bent down over him and set to work. Kakashi tied his arms loosely around his head. He didn’t really need an excuse to want to lave his tongue over his stomach, anyway. 

When he was finished cleaning Obito lifted his head and his teammate’s hands fell away. He said his name, again, endlessly. Obito crawled forward, tucked his face in his neck and hummed like he’d been sated -- but he hadn’t.

“I’m so hard it kind of feels like my legs are swelling.” He said, and Kakashi laughed. Obito leaned back to see his flat, boyish teeth, and decided post-head delirium was a good look for Kakashi. He nosed around his jaw again, very pleased. 

“I need a drink for real though,” Obito continued, starting to shift aside. “You want anything?”

“No,” Kakashi shook his head, and for a second he thought that was that, but then his teammate rolled after him, sat up and took him by the shells of his ears. “Stay,” he demanded tonelessly. 

“Huh? I’m just going to make tea, bro.”

“Luckily,” Obito added, pushing at his arms. “I know exactly where the kettle is.”

Kakashi twisted his wrists and reversed the grapple in a simple maneuver that left him trapped at arm’s length. Obito sighed, and stopped fighting him -- sat back down in the blankets and earned the release of one arm when his captor moved to clench his hand in a fist over the nape of his neck. 

“You don’t wanna kiss me, seriously -- ”

But apparently he didn’t mind the taste of himself, either. 

Obito couldn’t resist a roll of his eye, but when Kakashi repeated his simple demand, he gave in to the attention and cupped his hands under the slope of his roommate’s rib cage again -- then dropped them to his waist, slipped them under his shirt, and took up the same hold, this time with his palms on bare skin; it was a sensation Obito was quickly starting to crave. 

Kakashi’s chest swelled with a deep inhale. When he started pulling his shirt up over his head, Obito didn’t stop him, this time, but he didn’t have time to think twice about it before the damn Copy Nin sat over his legs and flattened his chest against him in one go.

“Unh,” he murmured over the riot caused by glancing contact over his crotch. “Hey, Kakashi -- ”

He hummed against his mouth. 

“What happens, if -- ” Obito tilted his hips, experimented with a grind against his teammate. “I wanna, hit?”

“Hit,” Kakashi’s eyes flickered open. “Hit _me?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yep... that's the happiest you will ever see k  
> fucking, silver unicorn, he is
> 
> fool  
> is there  
> aNOTHER ten pages of sin  
> after this ?!  
> yes, yes there is


	18. interlude: the gloaming

Bit by bit, Kakashi wove his thoughts back into recognizable patterns. 

But he kept bumping awkwardly up against the memory of the last ten minutes; it didn’t fit into his matrix no matter which way he spun it, and finally the Copy Nin surrendered -- put it down, and backed away. A stranger in his own brain.

Dusk had a way of rising from the pavement in the city, like a hot breath -- dense and heavy with the smell of night soil stirring in the gutters, the mingled fumes of oily late-night cantines, a few 3 a.m. bars, exhaust from passing vehicles; it was a familiar elixir of urban muck that permeated the city high and low, especially after the long rains. The stench rose, dampened the concrete foundations, sat on his tongue and long overstayed its welcome. 

A city bus reached the end of its line and eased to a stop at the top of their block with a distant squeal, and Kakashi listened for the slow hiss of releasing hydraulics. Engines groaned in the distance -- cabs, probably, reeling around the bar district, and every once in a while a motorbike kicked up with a long rattling growl. Every brush of wind set Konoha’s roadside canopies chattering, and black leaves made spiralling dives for the streets below. 

An autumnal fog had shoved its shoulders in around the tall buildings, trapping wandering demon lanterns in a sheer cobwebby haze. Streetlamps always died in the witching hours of the night, but the lanterns carried on, heedless of all weather, bobbing like fishing lures adrift in a gray sea. They glowed intermittently gold -- just enough light to keep wandering wraiths at bay.

Nobody knew much about wraiths except that they were attracted to a particular kind of shadow: the kind inside broke windows, or under bridges in disrepair -- ghettos, grave sites, and abandoned wells -- any deep crack in society. Most dwelled in the forest beyond the wall, but some always crept in. Occasionally their numbers surged, and reports of missing children would spike. 

Then the Military Police would summon more demons, and seal them inside more lighted orbs, and release them into the streets -- tiny slaves to treat the city’s malaise of clinging gloom. 

Demon lanterns could hold off the wraiths until spring, when the wraith-hunters arrived to cut their numbers back again. 

Still tangled up in his own muscle-tired head fog, Kakashi cycled hopelessly back around to the fact that he just got his brains blowed out by his teammate -- something you couldn’t’ve convinced him even two _min_ utes ago was going to happen -- and he was still plucking at the frayed ends of rational thought when Obito’s voice swept aside the city racket and fell over him like a drop curtain on a lousy opening act.

 _Obito,_ he surfaced a name. Obito liked his sword. Obito wanted more. Kakashi felt his eyes narrow, lazy with pride. Nothing could shut him down. 

“Kakashi?”

Then he remembered his teammate had asked a question. “Uhh -- ” 

The Copy Nin shut his mouth. In the next room, his third-level consciousness slapped a hand over its brow. 

Kakashi cleared his windpipe and swallowed around the residue. The process produced a miniature _mhm_ sound in the slums of his throat, and unknowingly answered his question.

“Really?” A close-mouthed, bullfrog grin. “Cool.”

He didn’t know if it was honesty or naivety -- or another symptom, perhaps, of Obito’s thoughtless disregard for any sort of rule or standard, even the social ones -- all Kakashi knew was, if he had just a dusting of the shit, he would’ve ended this annoying chase the first time Obito crawled into his bed. He’d’ve had the nuts to follow him out the damn door, maybe. But his private mental security matrix had failed him; everything Kakashi built up to protect himself since before he was five years old had forced space between himself and the others, his allies, and even, Kakashi realized, even after all those shitty nights spent in a hospital ward -- he was still unconsciously putting space on himself and his teammate.

“I really do need a drink though.” He said again. Obito’s voice struck him sometimes as a new thing and Kakashi couldn’t quite understand how any gruffness had climbed out of his goofy old rival -- but then again lots of other things had emerged in the last half-hour that were decidedly unprecedented; Kakashi hadn’t had his teammate pinned for a guy into cumplay, but Obito didn’t really know any two ways around these things. He didn’t give a solitary damn about what was trending in the hottest sex mags and Kakashi should probably just stop trying to make guesses about him. Planning his opponent’s moves ahead was for battle. Kakashi wished he could shut off the fucking soldier, for once. Just until sunrise.

Obito tipped his hips again, and there was something in his tone like amusement, something in his laughing eye like a wraith observing a weary traveller from the trees. Kakashi slid back to the blankets as he stood. “I’m gonna make tea.” He said. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll -- roll something to smoke.” Kakashi said, and was pleased to have arranged something sensical. If only it hadn’t been so loud, and so abrupt. 

The Uchiha snorted as he rose. “ _Ch_ , okay.” 

Standing, he pushed one hand under the band of his trunks to casually relieve some of the pressure on his erection, then seemed to consider something. Whatever it was made him lean down and reach with his free hand -- Kakashi felt a light tap at his jaw -- and the pad of a thumb traced the tail of scar under his eye. His eye. 

“Why d’you cover this all the time?” 

“I don’t. I used to.”

“But why?”

It drained his chakra. Secrets were an advantage in battle. It wasn’t anyone’s business about Obito’s eye. Kakashi ran through any number of reasons, feeling threadbare and distracted and wondering why his roommate decided to have this conversation with his hand around his dick. 

“It was my last part of you, I guess. I wanted to hide it from the world.”

“Ma-an.” Obito keened, leaning away at last. “You’re in love with me.” 

His grin faded the longer Kakashi didn’t deny it. Finally his hand left his shorts like he’d been cockblocked, and after another moment, he snorted again. “Get the fuck outta here.”

Kakashi felt his back go rigid with annoyance. “Why does everyone keep acting like that? I _do._ ”

He wanted to grab him by the ears, again, dig in with his feelings and leave reminders of them like half-moon grooves in his skin. “I do love you,” he spat through the head fog.

Obito blinked, glanced down, and blinked. “I, uh, gotta get something to drink.”

And he left. 

Another demon lantern drifted by under his bedroom window. Somewhere in the courtyard five floors below, an electric scooter started up its sharp, distinctive alarm sound. 

He hated the aspect of shinobi social dynamics that demanded reputation, Kakashi decided. He didn’t used to care that much but he hated how important it had become: the rumors, the stories, the way betting pools spread like nut butter through the ranks, just to keep everyone at each other’s throats, backbiting, and throwing stones -- it was all so the higher-ups could busy you around the truth, keep the herd dumb and occupied while the military invented an outsider to step on. 

Kakashi wasn’t being given a fair shot, he decided, and it was all -- 

His fault. 

He was full of stories and lies, too, he realized, maybe even worse than the rest of them. And Obito didn’t fuck with that. He shouldn’t have to.

“You sure you don’t want -- K? What’s a matter?” There was a stumble and a quiet hiss from the doorway. “ _Fucker!_ ”

Kakashi’s second-level consciousness dimly registered Obito lowering his steaming mug to the floor in the fashion one hurriedly does things that require time and concentration. He wiped his hands on his shorts and slid back into the blankets. “What's the -- ?” 

Obito didn’t wait to finish his own question, but closed the distance and surrounded him just as Kakashi lifted his hands to his face, vaguely wondering what the heck had thrown his teammate into a panic. 

At once they inhaled. Obito’s bare chest shoved flat against his and that was all Kakashi had ever really wanted -- it was just pathetic he had to cry for it. 

“Nah, come on,” his roommate was humming. Obito had probably never been comforted his whole life but some people were just naturally good at that sort of thing. 

After a while, he spoke again. “I’m sorry, dude. It’s just, a lot. And I know it’s not how stuff like this works, generally, but -- a heads-up would’ve been clutch."

Kakashi chuckled weakly. 

“Gods.” Obito swore lightly. “You’re even hot when you cry.”

His arms stacked themselves low behind his back and set him on a slow ride back into his lap. Kakashi flattened gratefully against him -- curled one hand over the back of his neck and tried to memorize the coarse grain of hair under his fingertips, the faint scents on his skin, the murmur of his heartbeat. Any person was his own society and every society had flaws -- darkness could creep in, anywhere. 

It felt like a long time before they spoke again. 

“Good?”

“Hm.”

“K-dot,” he hummed back. 

“Um,” Kakashi shifted. The lack of eye contact was relaxing and he settled his chin over his shoulder for refuge. “I’ve never wanted to share my ocean with anyone before.” 

An untimely itch arrived in his eye, and he drew back to rub at it. Obito shifted onto his ass and pushed his legs out one at a time. If the silence stretched any longer it was going to snap and Kakashi would feel dumb for saying it, and double dumb for feeling it -- but there was no going back. 

A dread like vertigo unfolded between his ears and started doing flips behind his eyes.

The pad of Obito’s thumb again, on the tail of his scar, traversing the well under his eye -- Kakashi felt the chill of moisture left behind. 

“Didn’t give you much choice, did I?”

“You can’t, possibly,” Kakashi paused, swallowed. He wasn’t going to cry or anything but a little nausea was making his throat constrict. “Feel bad about that.”

“A little.” said Obito, and he traced his eyebrow where the slender scar broke through it. “Sometimes. There’s an entire recorded history of people who hunt us down for these eyes. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You were dying.”

He smiled in a way that made Kakashi sick at heart, and his hand fell away. “So it goes.”

So it goes that a reckless desire to be close to someone ends in self-mutilation and putting the person you care about in danger? Yes, Kakashi knew about that. Obito wore the physical cost of it every day -- and Kakashi, well, he was closer to his breakfast food than most of his friends. 

_He_ was the fucking wreck, he realized, this whole time, and his teammate just had an extraordinary way of putting up with it.

Kakashi suddenly felt bad for all his pushing, but didn’t know how to apologize for it. Here he was instead, trying to seize closeness again without even doing half the emotional work for it. “I, uh, didn’t roll anything.” 

“You don’t have to,” said Obito, leaning back to stuff a hand in his pocket.

Kakashi took the crimpled little joint that he held out, and straightened some kinks in the roll. “This was supposed to be for your training today.”

“I, uh,” Obito paused, aiming a focused frown at Kakashi’s solar plexus like he was still holding something delicate. “Wanted to smoke it with you.”

He distracted himself lighting the little doobie -- felt his skin prickle, and purr. 

Then almost dropped the damn thing when his roommate’s hands got busy with his sides. “You’re -- covered in bruises,” he heard him murmur. 

Kakashi took a couple of starting drags while the blood rushed into his face and faded slow. 

“Oh,” chuckled the Uchiha. “I made these, didn’t I.”

Gods but he could be such an embarrassing idiot, sometimes.

“Sorry. I didn’t think it would be so easy.”

 _Now_ he wanted to fucking tackle him.

“Hey, Kash.” Obito continued, after accepting his pass. Some bands of fragrant, pillow-soft fog built up between them. Kakashi woke from his trance not because he was asked but because his roommate never called him that, and it sounded strangely impersonal. 

Obito took a long toke and then stared at the joint burning between his fingers. Smoke bled out his nostrils. “You ever think about that kid?”

“What kid?”

“Minato’s kid.”

“What about him?”

“They’re taking care of him, right -- like, that’s the son of a powerful dude, that’s the baby who saved the ninja world, so someone should be looking out, right?”

“I never really thought about it. But, yeah, makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Obito exhaled his second wind and finally made the pass. “We should check up on that, though.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

After his next inhale the Copy Nin shifted to his knees, found his teammare's lips and blessed him with a mouthful of smoke. 

“Agh,” Obito sputtered and broke to the side. 

“Breathe _in_.”

“Okay,” the Uchiha coughed. “Just give me a little, _war_ ning, next time. Fuck.”

“I just did.”

The second time their mouths met Obito swallowed his breath and let it recycle slowly out his nose. Kakashi took advantage of his moment of pause to bring up his free hand and correct the angle. The touch of his lips was bland, really -- just a soft, slightly above room temperature affair -- and yet the sensation was so strangely self-satisfying, Kakashi ducked in again and again for more. The affection he stole from his roommate always left him feverish; his thoughts spread thin over Obito’s skin and returned along with a head rush of frustration, longing and incompletion. Kakashi uttered a small moan. 

“Hey, watch where you’re waving that damn thing.”

“Oh.”

Kakashi sat up, licked his thumb and stubbed out the remains of the joint, left the last half-inch beside Obito’s teacup. 

“You know what you’re doing?”

“The basics,” he grunted back, eye dancing like it was abruptly overwhelmed.

“That’s encouraging.”

“ _You’re_ the one who wanted to be together.”

“You kissed me first.”

“What!” Obito’s nostrils flared. “You know that’s not true. You’re the one who started it -- with your, _moles_ and your, fucking, subtext!”

Well, this wasn’t good at all, Kakashi thought. Technically Obito had asked, but his roommate was looking very much like subtext himself -- underneath him, nearly nude and a hair too noisy -- Kakashi introduced his palms to his chest like conflict. He decided he was getting laid tonight, no matter how or who did what, and pushed on him until Obito laid back. 

Smoke shifted in his periphery, left traces against his skin -- pressure without weight, touch without warmth. Its texture on his tongue reminded him of the air inside Obito’s pocket dimension.

A demon lantern idled by the window and a gold saber of light lanced across the floorboards. It played over his friend’s hips, shattered, and bounced off the particles of smoke diluting the air around them. They were sitting at the bottom of an hourglass, suddenly, surrounded in golden dunes.

We could both be gone in a motherfucking instant, Kakashi thought.

He adjusted his shadow over the Uchiha. Maybe it was better if he showed him first.

“Hey, what’re you -- ”

“Just shut up a minute,” Kakashi told him. “You had your turn.”

He actually did shut up but his expressions always spoke much louder. 

There wasn’t any kind of pattern to Obito’s scars, but Kakashi had come to recognize some parts of them, places where happenstance clusters of pain and thunder resembled other things, order inside randomness like star constellations -- in the wicked arcs he saw a great wave and a crescent moon, six eyes in the patch of knotted tissue over his chest -- it was a tapestry of war and Kakashi knew he must be smoked inside and out and off the zoinkies but he thought Obito made a killer demon scroll. 

“When are we getting outa here?”

Kakashi grunted with an interrogative edge, focused on his perusal of just recently acquired goods. He tracked his fingers along the grooves inside his hips.

“I mean, when are we getting off this shitty block?”

“Whenever you want.” Kakashi dipped down to taste his centerline. “I’ve been looking at some places.”

“You have? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kakashi sat up on his knees and closed one eye. “'I needa catch up, K, no time for cards. Uchihas don't sleep. Train hard, get strong, one hundred hours a week -- '”

Obito started to protest, but Kakashi competed to drown him out. “'I can’t go out, Kakashi, it’s almost time to cry over my _dirt_ \-- '”

“You fucker!” he hissed, the exact moment he flipped, turning his hips, and Kakashi, into the blankets. But when he shifted to climb over him, Kakashi used Obito’s grip under his knee as counterbalance and nimbly reversed their positions again.

“What is the point, of doing all those push-ups,” he breathed over his old teammate's collar bone, flicked his tongue at the center notch. “If you still lack finesse?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy egg day yall  
> more coming soon
> 
> couple things~
> 
> i am recently on discord, stumbling around like a blind ass bambi, but i'm gonna open it up to anyone who wants to say hello/send some good vibes: divine_fool #6292
> 
> also, just as an experiment, i've started a ko-fi page. http://ko-fi.com/thedivinefool  
> i've never been one to produce art/lit for money, but the way i understand it ko-fi functions like a tip jar.  
> so just a nice way to say cool story bro.  
> who knows  
> maybe ill make stickers and fool merch and sell them at conventions or something
> 
> for now i'm running out of protein shakes and chapstick


	19. late nights pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as usual, so amazing to read everyone's comments last chapter ^^  
> y'all have made a very happy fool  
> special shout-out to those who donated coffee over ko-fi -- i appreciate your words and thoughts so much. used the extra $ bump for a new set of paints, evidenced in the art for u below.
> 
> this chapter is for anyone who's ever wanted to totally effin disappear
> 
> enjoy~

  


The moon was on its slow glide back to earth when the lights presiding over the Goose Fair dimmed. The annual trade festival traditionally carried on through the night, but over the years public enthusiasm for saturnalia had waned: in the interest of economy, vendors wanted to pack it in, review the ledgers, and prepare for business or travel the next day; civilians had to think about work in the morning, civic duties, and schoolwork -- things that used to exist alongside city-wide revelry but had since overshadowed it. No more music, no more dancing in the fields -- and no more prayer. There was work to be done.

Folk traditions with no commercial value had fallen prey to industrialization’s grinding teeth: rituals stripped down to simplistic, color-based customs; heirlooms and lore reduced to flashy costumes and catchy tunes; celebrations with vast and multifarious roots were now wedged firmly into standardized holi _days_. Superstition -- that deepest swell of collective memory, civilization’s dark undertow -- reduced to shallow forgeries.

Lakes and rivers and ponds used to burn with manmade torches all across the Land of Fire of Old, but no more. Autumns in Konoha had grown darker, quieter, and longer. Spring seized the city each year with greater force.

Bunzo-sensei had once told the class -- in his cryptic, unharried Way -- wherever there was water, there lived a dragon. An old myth, obviously.

Green Lake was not a lake at all; it was only a concrete tub filled with recycled toilet flush. It was the same treated fluid that flooded piss alley and watered the roadside canopies, nourished the Academy gardens. Kakashi could smell it in the air on hot days. He could taste it in the vegetables at the school cantine.

At that very moment a wall was under construction, going up around Hokutō district. The Public Liaison had called it _Har_ mony Gate, or something else predictably simpering, and promoted the behemoth as a government endeavor to protect the citizens of the ghetto from harmful drug traffick and black market activity. It was also a convenient way of sectioning off a slice of the unruly lower ring from the rest of the public. Wraith attacks were up in Hokutō. People were already suspicious of low town districts, and they weren’t exactly hot destinations for early spring _leaf_ -peepers. Hokutō was good as forgotten, behind the new wall. 

Kakashi resented the city, sometimes. He understood how people could be unaware of the darkness lurking beyond the walls, but how did they sleep through the violence inside them?

In his apartment surrounded by the pull-apart threads of his spare mind, Kakashi allowed himself to be cocooned, separated -- spared a conscience by the paper lantern softness of disassociation. 

“I don’t get it, dude.” Obito wiggled in the blankets like he was trying to find a place for himself in warm sand. “Why am I so much hairier than you?”

“Luck of the draw,” Kakashi hummed, and pet the creature beneath him. It was easy to ignore the kicking around his ankles, immobilize Obito’s every attempt at a hold or grapple; he wouldn’t go too out of bounds tonight, Kakashi decided. But he imagined it. He imagined teaching his teammate new positions, the Arc, the Lotus -- they would work through all the fun diagrams in his books, if he was down for it. If he didn’t decide this was a bad thing for teammates to do. 

He was still sifting through potential futures when Obito did finally manage to get the upper-hand -- but he didn’t do it with any artful counter-move; the Uchiha’s wrist and ankles just seemed to _phase_ through Kakashi’s -- and his teammate used the following moment of disorientation to knock him around. 

“What -- ”

“I thought about reality some more -- ” Obito interrupted, not ceasing to counter as Kakashi fought the reprisal. “And that thing you were saying, about consciousness being like a boat.”

Their wrestling took a half-turn too far and Kakashi’s head knocked on the floor. He thought consciousness was more like a feather on troubled waters, sometimes.

“If I strip it all the way down,” his roommate continued, breathing quick. “I think, I can discorporate any part of me I want.”

Kakashi dug his thumbs hard into the nerves under his lower ribs and tested his knee against his stomach for maximum flipping capacity, succeeded in lifting the Uchiha off of him but failed immediately to restrain him. In another moment Kakashi was redelivered hard into the blankets. He exhaled his annoyance through his nose.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad?” A single red eye narrowed down on him. “What d’ya mean, ‘not bad’? You’re all outta breath!”

“I love you.”

Obito sighed. “I know, Bakashi,” he eased his grip and Kakashi let his arms go limp. “But I need to think about it some more.”

Like wraiths unwelcome in the city, demons and things that walls were supposed to keep out -- Obito had a way of seeping in on you, blameless and blighted. 

“You ever done this before?”

“What, sex?” Kakashi remembered the meal he’d eaten on the night he lost his virginity. Some kind of soup dumpling that hadn’t sat well with him. “Uh, uh-huh.”

Obito sat back and seemed to wait for something more, scratching at his chest like he intended to peel back his half-cloak of scars. 

Kakashi cleared his throat. “Uh, Yahagi. For a bit. Once, maybe.”

“Oh.” His eye widened on some distant point. “ _Oh._ That makes sense.”

“What d’you mean?”

“She’s so mean to me, bro.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t have the faintest idea, do you?”

A few planes of Kakashi’s layered consciousness blended back together, and he blinked at his roommate with renewed attention. “You never said anything.”

“How d’you not _no_ tice? Everything I do pisses her off! During that cram battle she -- you know what? Forget it. It’s obvious you don’t give a damn.”

Kakashi wrapped his fingers around his neck -- felt that his teammate was hot and bothered and not entirely in a sexy way. “B, I’m… sorry.” He admitted, and thought of something safe to say. “I’m doing, a lot of things at once.”

Obito dodged his gaze and looked over his shoulder, expression moody but cowed. He tilted forward at the hips and the bridge of his nose brushed across Kakashi’s cheek. “I know.”

“How ‘bout you come back here now, though?” Obito suggested at a murmur. 

Kakashi smiled unhappily. He couldn’t give him that, now -- but he wanted to. “Take off your clothes, then,” he suggested, gesturing at his roommate.

When Obito blinked at him, Kakashi hurried him along. “Go on. Let’s see what you got.”

He eyed him an extra moment but got moving, then paused with his thumbs hooked under the band of his shorts. “Is that how you swept Yahagi off her feet?”

“She didn’t find me very romantic, if that’s what you’re implying.” 

Kakashi steadied himself on both elbows to watch him, and added: “You wanted to hit, so take it all off.”

“You too, then.”

“Fine.”

At once Obito rolled away to kick off his shorts and Kakashi lifted his hips to discard his own a moment before the Uchiha settled back on his knees between his legs, and his hands reached out to him but Kakashi batted them away.

Obito chuckled nervously. “What’re you looking at?”

“I didn’t expect you to be so dark.”

“Ah, what?”

“Your dick,” Kakashi clarified. He reached down and wrapped his hand around the shaft in question. Obito was pretty girthy. Color like chocolate milk. Kakashi imagined the Uchiha clan’s extraordinary fertility rates explained. Maybe the men were all hung. 

Kakashi wanted to feel them together and pulled his roommate forward while he laid back -- Obito didn’t seem to mind the guidance and once Kakashi jerked his hips against him a couple of times his roommate got the idea and took over. For a half-second at the height of every thrust that followed, their bodies went airtight together like zipper teeth and Kakashi left his mind in the spaces in between.

“B,” he managed after a while, when his breath caught up. “This isn’t actually, how it works.”

“Oh.” Kakashi felt the drag of wood up his inner leg as Obito slowed to a standstill above him in one long grind. “Felt like it was working.”

“We can try that some other time, but -- ” No more fucking around.

He shoved at his roommate until he sat back on his haunches, rose with some difficulty and loped over to his desk. He felt a breeze on his belly and glanced back at his bed, hands shaking suddenly at the thought of being tied with him. Kakashi breathed, steadied, and found what he was looking for. 

He pitched the little jar at his roommate and kneeled in front of him with his back turned. 

“This is the thing that fool Drongo gave you,” he heard him mutter, and Kakashi looked over his shoulder to watch Obito’s hands work at the object until it came apart into two pieces. “Smells like apples. And -- mint. What is it?”

“Lube.”

“I get that, but what’s it _made_ of?” 

“Ilang-ilang.”

“Ah-ha,” Obito laughed once. “Ya-mom ya-mom?”

“It’s a _tree_ , Obito.”

“You bought tree lube from the _dron_ go.”

“It’s not just lube!” Kakashi snapped, annoyed, breezy but for a dim heat on his back. He was hard as murder a minute ago. “Technically it’s an alternative medicine.”

Obito hummed.

“It -- might also be an aphrodisiac.”

“What does that mean?”

Kakashi snorted. “It’s gonna make you _real_ hard, B.”

“I’m not really having an issue with that.”

The Copy Nin snorted again. “It’s gonna make you hard a lot longer.”

“And you?”

Kakashi nodded. Then he waited. 

“You bought happy tree lube from _Drongo?_ ”

 _Holy hell_ , Kakashi thought, his patience setting sail. He twisted his back and snatched up the jar from his idiot friend, and informed him while slicking two fingers on his right hand that yes, he did sometimes order stuff from the dealer on 116th Street -- he had connections Kakashi did not and he trusted the former shinobi not to try foisting any synthetic shit off on him. 

He hadn’t fingered himself lately because his bed always seemed to be occupied, but the memory of how it felt wasn’t too hard to extract.

Kakashi finished his explanation with the assertion that he didn’t need to justify buying happy tree lube for himself. 

But, he also wasn’t going to complain if someone wanted to try it with him.

Obito pushed one palm against the back of his hip and slid it around to his navel, which Kakashi found oddly comforting. Meanwhile he sat further up on his heels, traced his hole with one finger without really trying to penetrate, just to psych himself up -- and weathered the intense sensation of being watched. Finally Kakashi inhaled through his nose and pressed lightly around his rim once more before sliding inward. His roommate wasn’t giving him much room to work with, but as Kakashi settled down to the knuckle he didn’t really have the extra brain cell to complain about the loose, heated clamp that settled around his cock. 

“This doesn’t seem so complicated.”

“I’m doing the hard part,” Kakashi grit, working on introducing the second finger. 

Obito’s hand slid into a sudden grip on his nuts, and Kakashi felt his mouth hit the lump of cervical spine on the back of his neck. For a guy who got shy about making out, Obito didn’t seem to have a problem sucking marks into other odd places. At least, Kakashi mused, he wouldn’t have an issue with covering them. With this in mind, he never once told Obito to stop or think twice about the damage he could do. 

His teammate’s hand ferried up to his hip, then back again to his crotch. The pad of his thumb dragged through the sensitive hairs at the base of his cock with enough of a rough edge to alert Kakashi with an involuntary jerk.

“Pass the ya-mom shit, then,” Obito husked. “I’ll try.”

He fumbled with his free hand for the jar, thought of the Uchiha’s burning fingers and shuddered abruptly while his own tickled his prostate. Kakashi recentered himself. He sighed at the uncomfortable angle, and again when his roommate’s breath stirred the hair at his nape. When Obito caught him around the wrist Kakashi took it as his cue and started to withdraw his fingers -- slowly, since the lube had wicked off somewhat, enough to make the process awkward and a little arduous. 

Finally he pulled all the way free and shifted on his heels again. Obito’s palms settled in the skin under his hips and began a heated glide up his sides; Kakashi lifted his arms over his head like he was being relieved of an invisible garment, and when it was over he relaxed and arched his back forward, glad to be rid of it -- whatever it was. 

His teammate shuffled up closer, split his knees around him and curled forward to pin his chest to the nest where Kakashi’s winged shoulder blades slid apart. One arm wrapped around his stomach, and Kakashi felt the tap of his roommate’s finger at his tailbone; he’d overdone it a bit with the lube and a trickle of it fled lukewarm down the crease of his ass but Obito followed it, and Kakashi hummed his encouragement. 

When he felt one finger press around the rosebud ring of muscle between his cheeks, Kakashi planted his hands on Obito’s legs and shifted himself back as far as he could -- forcing both the swift vacancy of air from his teammate’s lungs as his back hit his chest, and the swift entry of his shy finger. His nail made a few unpleasant encounters with the wall of his colon but for the most part passage was smooth and Kakashi convinced himself to relax and allow Obito’s careless heat inside him. 

When he ran out of length Kakashi tensed and the Uchiha wheezed and swore as if he was the one riding stick. Kakashi let his head fall idly back to his shoulder, tilted it to the side when his roommate took an interest in nibbling along the slope of his neck.

Outside, black leaves still made spiralling dives for the misty streets. All things fall. All of this, Kakashi thought, was inevitable. 

Then, absurdly, he called to mind the day 5-year-old Obito sat on that jello cup -- how his energy had leapt and snapped back at Kakashi’s for the first time; he’d known, since then, that they were going to orbit each other a long time, in one way or another. 

Kakashi was cool with how it all worked out but he probably wouldn’t’ve guessed it exactly, from the jello thing. Most of his early -- and several admittedly recent -- memories of his teammate ended the same way: Obito mad. And crying, sort of. 

Hard. Hard against his ass and breathing like a fucking angry bull down the column of his throat. 

Obito was left-handed and while he worked his right stationed itself wide-fingered around Kakashi’s hipbone. Occasionally it spidered to his opposite side or plunged to leave an impression on his dick in a flurry of fleeting, searing touches. 

“K, can I -- ”

“Huh.” Kakashi cleared his throat and swallowed. “Uh-huh.”

Obito pulled back to the second knuckle and stacked another lubricated finger over the first; they slid in with ease and Kakashi could feel the slight extra length in his stroke; he seemed to have an idea what he was looking for, and suddenly Kakashi's encouraging hum opened to a wider noise of approval. 

The light from two separate demon lanterns passed before he could grit his name. He wished he would stop fucking around.

“Huh?” Obito rotated his fingers. A shudder rattled up his spine. The grip on his cock tightened. 

“Fuck, Obito.” Kakashi swore with tremendous ferocity and very little volume. “Let’s fuck.”

It was just a waste of chemistry not to, he thought.

“Okay,” he heard his teammate agree, unnecessarily. Both hands retreated and Kakashi adjusted himself forward over his knees. After a moment he heard the rumble of Obito’s voice again, in no clear language. 

“What?” 

“Nothing.” Obito grunted. “Just, never thought I’d be lining myself up with the Copy Ninja’s scrawny ass.”

Kakashi rolled his eyes. “Didn’t mean to keep you lusting away in secret for so long.” 

“I’ll get over it soon.”

His skin prickled in the sudden heat of the night and Kakashi tipped over onto his hands. After a moment laden with quiet anticipation, Obito’s voice ambled out the darkness again. 

“Um -- ”

“What now?”

“Is there some way, I can -- look at your face?”

Kakashi sat back on his haunches and twisted to put an eye on the Uchiha. He spent a few breaths drinking in his teammate’s blushing features -- at once disfigured and innocent.

“Are you asking me for missionary?”

Obito drew the inside of his forearm tight across Kakashi’s belly, closed a hand over his hip, and did the same around his back with the opposite arm. Kakashi had enough time to make a grab for his pillow before his teammate exerted the force necessary to flip him -- clipped his legs to his sides to ease the momentum as Obito reintroduced him to the stack of tatami floor mats covered in blankets they’d been calling a bed. 

It was never a hard landing, per se, but the straw mats were firm enough to scare the wind out of you, and after taking a few more flat-backed falls that evening than he was accustomed to, Kakashi took a few seconds to recenter. His chakras felt shuffled, aggravated -- they were wide awake in the middle of the night, and the babysitter was clearly dead.

A single red eye regarded him in the gloom. Kakashi loosened his legs as he slid closer; Obito caught one under the knee and braced it against his shoulder, swept his hand through the sparse hair over his shinbone and turned his head till his nose brushed his ankle. Kakashi reflexively eyed Obito’s cock as it came to rest snugly against his valuables, hurried to tuck his pillow under his tailbone to at least improve the angle -- and decided he would enjoy the view even if he did end up folded in half. 

Hip to crown his roommate was an unrefined jumble of shared memory, and Kakashi thought again what a devastating demon scroll the Uchiha made. There was a fullness to his darkness, a kind of hollowness made whole -- what he lacked in discipline he made up for ten-fold in vision, and direction; Kakashi was the opposite. He knew he needed to be checked. The truth was he depended on Obito not being patient with him. 

Kakashi must’ve done an impression of something very wanton because Obito grinned at him, starting to lean over and down. Kakashi had to cock his knee as his trapped leg was forced almost into his chest, and he remembered to open his mouth an instant before their lips collided. Obito took his lower lip between his teeth. Kakashi sucked his tongue into his mouth. 

By the time they separated, Obito was breathing hard enough to keep a coal fire burning, and still rutting fruitlessly against him. 

"Stop," Kakashi grit. “Fucking around.”

Obito sat back and rocked his hips forward. The head of his cock bumped against the narrow delta of skin under his nuts and Kakashi flexed the leg over his shoulder. 

“Wait, don’t forget -- ”

Obito snatched up the ilang-ilang jar and worked it apart. “I got it, I got it.”

When he settled again it was with the same artless collision of equipment and Kakashi sighed, reached down to guide him. He withdrew his hand after managing to accommodate the flared tip; Obito weighed his hands down over his sides and continued to inch forward on his own. Huffing and wheezing like he was passing through the eye of a fucking needle. 

“B -- ” Kakashi began, didn’t have adequate breath to tell him not to make such a production out of it, but he was satisfied that his teammate heard him when he grunted back. 

“Sorry. It just feels like, I’m -- ” He trailed off.

Filling him up, Kakashi finished for him, officially strained beyond words. Wasn’t sure if his senses had deceived him or if Obito’s dick was ten yards longer than his eye could see; he could’ve sworn the Uchiha had bottomed out several times, only for him to keep pushing. 

Finally his teammate uttered a long drawn-out obscenity and slumped over, dropping his forehead over Kakashi’s middle. 

“B.” He combed both hands through his hair. “This isn’t how it works, either.”

“ _I know,_ ” he growled to his chest. “But dude -- ”

Obito lifted his head. He was breaking into a sweat. “You're so tight -- I’m gonna nut in two seconds!”

“Well don’t do _that_ , idiot.” Kakashi closed his fist in his brown hair and shook. “Move!”

“Ow! Shit!” 

A slight shift in Obito’s stance conjured a stinging sensation -- with neither pain nor pleasure winning out -- and the Copy Nin released him to clamp his teeth over his knuckle. 

“Keep being an ass,” said the Uchiha, curling his arm more securely around Kakashi’s leg. “And I’ll go all night.”

He tried a very slow, deep stroke -- then a second, puffing strain and vitriol -- and the third arrived with another sting of pleasure that Kakashi struggled to muffle.

Unsuccessfully, it seemed, as his roommate slowed to an aching standstill and eyed him questioningly.

“Does this, actually… ” His respiration had settled to just double-time. "Feel good for you?”

Kakashi offered his anger up to the gods and answered with what he imagined was a buddha-like calm: “ _Yes_ , Obito.” That’s why people have _sex_ , Obito. Shut up and move your fucking -- 

“You wanna switch?”

“Wh -- _no!_ ” Kakashi barked at him so fast he went hoarse with it -- lost his concentration and tensed involuntarily, prompting a long and piteous whine from his teammate. He felt bad instantly, but -- in the kind of way you feel bad about a bird flying into glass. Part of him just thought, you did this to yourself, motherfucker.

“Just -- ” Kakashi lifted his arms and rubbed his knuckles in his eyes. “Finish, will you?”

Obito drew a spiral like a seal with the pad of his thumb on his belly, and Kakashi turned his face into the cool inside of his elbow, suddenly hot. He stretched carefully, flexing and extending his knee where his teammate held it, and felt a pleasing little buzz when Obito pressed his cheek to it. 

A residual, energetic heat warmed his stomach even after he shifted away, stationed his hands back at Kakashi’s hips and sunk himself to the base. “You want me to finish, like this?”

He felt exactly where Obito settled, and decided he would remember that spot. Zero degrees of separation. Tiny tremors wracked his legs. 

“K?”

“Uh -- ” Kakashi licked his bottom lip, reminded himself to continue breathing. Just two steps. In and out. Easy. “If you want.”

Obito trailed the backs of his knuckles up his leg, hip to knee. The touch was different from the cloying heat of his palms, lighter and softer, but possessed with the same dark finesse -- like someone manipulating fabric. “Word,” the Uchiha murmured, his copy wheel spinning. 

_Tell me you love me,_ Kakashi communicated in a glare.

Then finally -- 

_Finally_ instead of playing freddie fuck-around with his knee, Obito docked it over his shoulder and dropped his hand into a full grip of ass cheek. Kakashi grit his teeth at the slight change in angle but a thin gasp ripped loose when his teammate began to move with it. Nothing tugged too bad but he wasn’t so slick that he couldn’t feel the friction, and Obito's random and untimed encounters with his prostate were shortcuts to working noise out of him. 

A thought crossed his mind and took hold; it hadn’t occurred to him in a minute, but suddenly Kakashi became aware of how sorely hard he was. He didn’t think he could loosen his hands where they’d fisted in the blankets. 

When the bloodstuck heat of his erection was surrounded in an unfamiliar grip it burned three-fold and Kakashi seized up and choked on the overstimulation -- Obito didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to move his hand, especially as his pace was picking up, but when his shallower strokes met rapidfire success Kakashi fought the urge to squirm, acquired the rhythm and thrust into his hand. 

He knew his teammate was winding up when he started to lean in, leaving the grip on his cock to brace his hand near Kakashi’s side. His knee was almost shoved into his chest when Obito abruptly faltered, shivered, and rushed his way through a few more strokes -- Kakashi watched his orgasm build on itself and was already tipping over the edge blinking around the lights in his own eyes when his teammate turned his head and sunk his teeth into his ankle. 

_Fucker,_ he thought distantly. Their mixed cries climbed to the shallow ceiling and disturbed the stagnant late-night fogginess of piss alley. Nobody copied the Copy Nin. 

When he'd got his breath mostly back Kakashi slapped at his wilting roommate until he initiated a backward slide -- slapped at him harder until he took the hint and slowed the fuck down. All ten freakin' yards of Uchiha cock later, Kakashi let his legs fall closed and tipped onto his side, winded. Obito fell to the mat next to him, groaned like he’d done all the work. 

Sometime between opening his eyes and closing them again, Kakashi retreated stiff-legged to the bathroom for a cursory clean up. Caught himself yawning and nodding off with the showerhead still pissing water down the drain. They had no extra towels.

The Copy Nin tumbled back into his bed to air-dry, and accepted the slight chill that came with it. He cleared his throat with a jet of air and a thick cough -- but more rocks tumbled around his throat and Kakashi decided to just work around them. 

“I love you.”

After a brief pause he flung out an arm and the back of his hand struck Obito audibly across the chest. “Say it.”

His teammate took his time propping himself on one elbow and glanced down at him with a worrisome crease in his brow. “I, uh, love you too, man -- I think. Alright?”

“Alright,” Kakashi seized him by the ears. “Now say it like you’re not afraid of it.”

“Shut up,” Obito growled and shoved him brutally away. “I hate that you’re doing this right now.” He shifted onto his side and put his back to Kakashi. “Go to sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus art?
> 
> unrelated yung renegade K, random concept from this morning:  
> 


	20. blood wake pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> _ain't dead yet my ninjas_  
>  its work i swear  
> things will quiet down this summer --
> 
>   
> so grateful to everyone who left a comment on the last chapter. it brightens my nights and i really cant thank u enough -- I'll get back to each one. <3
> 
> okay  
> stfu fool  
> here we go

Obito woke to the breath of a cool, clammy morning on his skin and a northerly wind over the abandoned barrow of his left eye.

It was the coldest hour of pre-dawn in the Shivering Forest, and a gray mist had settled in pools around the ankles of the aromatic trees, plunging the ground below into obscurity. 

Elsewhere in the Fire Country, autumn was waning fast; without anywhere to go it fled to the borderlands, where age-old tangles of black birch and beechwood were the only trees capable of withstanding the long lingering cold -- in fact they seemed to thrive on it. 

Roving deer carved crooked paths through the frosty undergrowth. You never saw them and they never stayed but razed the hilly forest floor of all roots, shoots, pendulous leaves and sinewy layers of loosened bark-skin. Kakashi could smell them miles off from the musk of their pelts, and even Obito could detect the sharp wintergreen scent of birch sap leaking from broken branches left in their wake.

That was how he first discovered his stalker.

His, in Obito’s mind, because if Kakashi was aware of it he didn’t say. He _wouldn’t_ say, given mission protocol on open communication in the field and all that: only a complete nimrod would share vital uncoded information aloud; and don’t waste energy on idle conversation, either -- your time is mission time. No unnecessary standing around or stretching. Stop smelling daisies. No walking on the grass, get your ass in the trees, pussy --

If Kakashi was aware of Obito’s stalker, he didn’t say.

Seated deeply in the wood that bordered the Land of Fire, ancient copses of black birch grew dense and thicket-strong, old as time and notoriously difficult for foreign shinobi to navigate. Black birches were slim and pale while they were young -- and easily identified in the mountains just beyond the capital city’s walls -- but few citizens of Konoha recognized them once they matured: after two centuries the trees lost their pale skin and supple limbs; darkness crept in root to crown and deep vertical rifts split and scarred the bark. By the time the trees reached 300 years their knobbed arms groaned and grabbed for one another until they were so twisted and knotted that one careworn westerly wind could send a shudder like an ache through the entire forest. 

Rumors concerning the haunted old wood were like standard issue canned carrots: worthless inside the Village walls and traded like currency outside of them. 

Obito suspected most of the rumors had been seeded, cultivated, and bastardized by the twisted fuckers of 1st Platoon, probably during a time when border security was a patchwork combination of strained military capacity and blind superstition -- just as dependent on swords as whispers. This was a balancing act the Land of Fire performed very well. And when the wars ended and all the swords were broken or put away the whispers endured. Cast-off tales of the Fire-side wood were still adrift beyond their borders, some worn and waning and others magnificently embellished.

It was said there was an untamed knoll deep in the Shivering Forest, so tightly interwoven overhead and underfoot that the canopy could not be pierced even by light. It was said the ecosystem beneath the wood’s impenetrable eaves sank deep into the shade, returned fully to the earth and the earth’s breast had swollen to meet it. Root systems mimicked tangled paths, distance tricked you; wicked corridors yawned and stretched through the thicket dark only to tighten and close off again when the end was in sight. Only the solitary leafcutter bee, a creature which coexisted with the black birch, could navigate in and out of these darkest recesses. They maintained the forest’s dingles and dells like duty-bound spirits, pruning the catkins for sweet nectar and using the leaves to line and waterproof their nests under the turbid soil. 

Rumor had it any and all who tried hacking a trail through the border wood were doomed to die shivering; the forest took their bodies deep into the dirt, only for their spirits to resurface as leafcutter bees, bound to toil in servitude under the black birches forever. 

Obito had never heard of a bee that lived alone, or one that nested in the ground, and he’d never noticed any buzzing of bees inside the well-travelled wood -- so he figured it was all the usual military ass-piss and byproduct from the bullshit factory that was 1st Platoon.

Bullshit, he supposed, that had protected them from outsiders this long. At what cost, he couldn’t be sure. Fire was extraordinary with a purpose, under close control and supervision -- cataclysmic when left to its own devices. 

When Obito woke it was with a chill over his left eye and an ache like a vale stretching under his ribs. 

Cold in the Shivering Forest wasn’t like the frigid cold of a northern winter; it didn’t nip at your fingers and eartips or play about in the windy wooded rafters. Cold in the Shivering Forest never arrived and it never left; it grew inside you. 

Obito pulled his knees into his chest and arranged his feet slowly beneath him. Sleep was a dark tunnel and he emerged on the other side of it weary. For a moment he sat crouched with his poncho over his ears and shoulders while the morning came upon him; but it made a lousy blanket. And he had to piss. 

The scent of birch sap was sweet and faint even as far as the upper canopy of the beechwood they’d settled in the previous night. Obito allowed himself to fall rather than leap to the lower reaches of a neighboring birch.

Each layer of black, tire-tracked bark split after about a century; this one was at least 300 years old. Raido and Genma swore they found a seven-layer birch once, but if Obito believed those two he’d start listening to all those rumors about cannibal forests -- lonely soul-bees and shit, crawling up out of the underworld.

His body temperature must’ve dropped ten freaking degrees overnight because it felt like pissing hot oil. Obito yawned, leaned over his toes for the final shake -- then froze head to toe and nearly slipped in the trappings of his wakeless wandering thoughts when the scent of wintergreen went sharp as nails and filled the air like murderous intent. 

Far off in the listless tides of mist below, he could just make out a figure standing chest-deep in the silver soup: the dark shape of a man -- or some broad-shouldered, upright watcher. 

Obito hurried to tuck himself away. 

Shinobi didn’t travel along the forest floor and it had been days since Obito had seen or touched the ground, but he knew the mists in the border wood could grow deep as rivers. Deeper. His stalker could’ve been average height, hidden by a single shifting fathom of silvery vapor; or he was a freakishly tall stalker standing on fifty-feet ghoul legs. Obito didn’t want to wait and find out, but even as he willed his feet to move, he remained rooted to the spot -- at once fascinated and repulsed by the stranger in the mist. 

A short-stop breath stuck high in his throat but he wasn’t afraid. Obito wasn’t afraid of anything; he was shinobi, he was an Uchiha -- he had faced worse than this fucker when he was a _ba_ by -- 

A sound jarred him fully from sleep: a deep ululating rumble that rippled and grew on itself in volume and intensity until it seemed to quake the thin lower canopy. It took Obito a moment to shake off the shock and figure out what it was: laughter. His stalker was laughing at him. With a guttural, male human quality that seemed vulgar and strange in the wild wood. 

He dared not blink, searching for the right mental cues to activate his Sharingan, but it was like he was five years old again and struggling to temper the raging currents inside him, unable to settle on a precise outlet for his fear and frustration and setting it all loose on himself instead -- 

Obito blinked a single strained tear from his dismal eye, pivoted, and bolted for the upper canopy. The watcher’s immoderate rip-throat laughter followed him. 

Back in the beechwood high above the fog level, the presence seemed to disappear and Obito rubbed the memory of his stalker from his skin. He debated crawling back under his poncho, but looked for his roommate instead. 

Kakashi had fallen into a light doze on his last watch. He was seated in a high bough, straight-backed against the trunk, chin nodding low over his collar bone. 

“K,” Obito murmured on his approach, before gauging whether his teammate was awake. The scare left him feeling strung-out and limber -- panic and worry eased together to occupy the void inside his chest and Obito dropped to his heels. As an afterthought he twisted to pan his eye over their surroundings once more. Nothing. Even the wintergreen smell of bleeding branches had faded. Dawn hunched haggard over the upper canopy.

Kakashi was heavy-lidded, unresponsive but awake. Obito crept forward, musing that, if anybody wanted to kill him, they would have to go through K first, and Obito might be incompetent and easily spooked with his dick out but his killer teammate could wreck a laughing spectre with a fucking raised eyebrow. 

Shivering Forest was top-coat weather, at least, and worse at night. They hadn’t played around packing for the journey: thermals, flak jacket, top-coat fatigues, over-coat, poncho. 

But even K-dot woke with a suppressed shiver and Obito was seized by a sudden tenderness for his teammate -- the kind that probably went against regulations for acceptable range of expression in the field: no screaming, no getting carried away by emotion, touching, or feeling, No _crying_ , pussy --

“What’s wrong?” 

“Uh -- ” Obito shifted on his heels, leaned his arms over his knees and drove a knuckle into his eye. “I had a dream I was eating, like, my whole leg, dude. But it was so tough, and chewy -- I think I need to fatten up more.”

“Mm.”

“You didn’t wake me up for watch.”

Kakashi’s half-lidded gaze took on an upturned slant and Obito thought maybe he was smiling. “I fell asleep.”

“Your ass must be killing you.”

He immediately wished he’d never spoken but instead of a snappy Hatake comeback his teammate only tipped his head back against the trunk and stretched his arms over his head. “Sore,” he said simply.

“Uhm,” Obito crept forward some more, cleared his throat. “Can I -- ? Um.”

The Copy Nin’s eye curled fully and a gentle _mhm_ sound rose in his throat. He pressed further into his space and Kakashi’s arms fell languidly over his shoulders like they’d choreographed the shit. Obito forgot about his sick dream, silly field regulations, secrets and titty ass stalkers; he waited the moment for his teammate to wiggle out of his mask and reintroduced himself close-lipped and earnest. Fingers carved hard rifts through his hair and for one second in a world of hideous shit Obito had a good feeling. 

Before the rising sun even touched them with its pallid rays rain began to fall, pattering loud and out-of-sync over the upper canopy. Skylarks trilled in the high branches, higurashi cicada were starting up a chant below. Their mingled song made a mournful dawn chorus. 

Breakfast was a damp and half-hearted affair: two hardtack biscuits each, lethally dry, and a single M-ration split between them. M-rations were a canned elixir of overly soft stew meat and mushy onions; Obito found them monotonous and unappealing after only a few days. He didn’t like eating off spoons, either, because all he could taste in the end was tin spoon -- but he decided the standard issue utensil had been cleverly designed to neutralize the flavor of unpleasant rations.

Their two-man team normally travelled very efficiently on food pills, but military funding went to shit in times of “peace” and the capitol’s resources were stretched strangely thin -- at least, this was the bedtime story FOB was spoon-feeding them. But Obito couldn’t get the taste of metal out of his mouth. 

The first-in bag they’d signed out from Mission Control seemed packed for a mountaineering expedition during the Warring States Period. Obito couldn’t think what use they’d have for compression straps, carabiners, or climbing skins -- most of which were obsolete or had many years since been updated with newer models -- but the covered hatchet and thermos flask were kind of cool. Unexpected, but cool. Obito tried to familiarize with the hatchet. He’d never managed to resonate with any weapon in particular, despite having the skills to wield many things, and imagined it was time to update his image with something practical, fresh, arcane enough to be sexy -- something not very heavy, he hoped. 

It was high noon and he'd been carrying the pack for six hours; it felt like time for a break, but Kakashi was navigating for them and he’d sat up on watch all night so Obito swallowed his complaints along with a stubborn bit of hardtack from breakfast and mentally girded himself against the tire. 

Another hour passed, or something like it -- the sun was firmly behind the trees and could be falling, spinning or hop-skipping for all he knew. Obito surpassed both hunger and weariness and arrived instead at an indiscriminate rage. _Fuck_ the Shivering Forest of _fucks_. Fuck his teammate’s ridiculous pace. Fuck all these face-whipping, ankle-grabbing _tree_ motherfuckers -- 

“Obito.”

He caught the whisper -- or rather, the whisper caught up to _him_ \-- just one foot and half his body-weight into a leap from birch to beech, and in his rush to turn and address the source of the strange voice he performed a ridiculous mid-air caper that revealed nothing behind him and instead spoiled his landing. He plummeted several meters. 

When Obito finally landed it was much colder. And, he realized, with mounting unease -- below the fog level, near the forest floor. The canopy was a net of pale gray far above him. 

He didn't wait for a haunting and ascended without delay. He didn't look down. He didn't think again of the branches grabbing at his ankles or whipping at his face, and he did not pretend they were anything other than wood. 

On reaching a reassuring height above the mist, Obito murmured the name of his shitty teammate, knowing he had gone ahead -- and with no other avenue for his beating heart or inexplicable rush of adrenalin, he drove himself onward through the wood. He had no fucking clue where he was going. 

Black birches flickered by like chittering spectators to his foolhardy flight and Obito felt his whole body stiffen in hate and dejection. Something brushed the back of his neck. Every time he slowed his pace or entered a quiet pocket of Forest he imagined a smattering of distant ugly laughter and it urged him on. 

At least, until he was struck in the middle by a length of iron and delivered pack-first into the trunk of a very large and very old birch. Dizzied by the blow and the sudden stop, Obito counted four layers of split bark and three chatty drongos flapping circles over his head. 

“Slow down,” said Kakashi, unnecessarily. “I’m trying to get a bearing.”

Obito shrugged his senses together, uninspired by the fact his teammate’s staying arm had nearly knocked him the fuck out. “Where are we?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Kakashi patiently. He had a habit of saying things very patiently when he thought you were an idiot. 

The mission guide included a map of their Area of Operation, and Kakashi stretched its laminated pages between his gloved hands. 

“Read me the objective again.”

The Copy Nin flipped to the front of the booklet, though both of them knew its contents by heart. “'Neutralize disturbance in Gyokuro Province.'” he read. 

Obito scoffed and did an impression of someone whipping a paper napkin off a cluster of hidden motives. “This area hasn’t even been surveyed yet -- we’ve got nothing to go on but a few shitty sentences about tea leaves and mangroves. _Neu_ tralize -- the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are we here to chop hedges, or heads?”

The tip of his teammate’s finger travelled the length of a long promontory of land demarcated just south of the Land of Fire; the country was veined thickly in rivers and Obito anticipated swamp-like bayou conditions with mounting dislike. “Colonel Dusky is a complete bastard,” he continued. “He opens every meeting with a crack about my handwriting, and all I can do is stand there and say ‘Thank you, sir’ like I haven’t met piles of mouse droppings with more wit -- ”

“We’re still -- ” Kakashi’s finger arrived back at the base of the figure. “Here, just beyond the border.”

Obito frowned at the curving promontory. 

“Your map, looks like,” he formed his accusation slowly, jabbing two fingers at the country which offended him. “A limp, dick!”

  


“That’s not very helpful,” Kakashi hummed. “But -- “ He rotated the map northwest, and achieved a slightly perkier image of Tea Country. “I see what you mean.”

Obito grit his teeth. Sometimes his teammate’s abject apathy made him want to throw chickens and smash pots. 

“We’re travelling _south_.” Obito turned away, growling his frustration. “It shouldn’t be cold as _tits!_ ” He kicked at the beechwood trunk with tremendous force, bruised his toe, and sat for a moment in the overwhelming pain of his quick decision. 

Kakashi folded the map downward and eyed him over the crease. “You never had a mother figure, did you?”

Obito lunged at him.

Days rolled by in the Shivering Forest. The longer they spent in its quiet dells and dingles the more the cold seemed to creep and twine around Obito’s bones. In some ways, the best pace through the border wood was a ruthless one; anything else left the traveller crippled, fighting dropping temperatures and the long nights like deep winter -- a winter which grew and grew on a person without ever accumulating frost or changing its shape on the land.

At night Obito struggled to curl his limbs as best he could around the small fluttering thing in his chest. But the freeze seemed to creep up from within, and heat without. For some time he would lay listening to the whispering trees and the rhythm of his own chattering teeth. When the poncho lifted and another body slid in behind him, Obito knew it was his turn to take watch. Kakashi roused him in his peculiar fashion, posted up along his back. Teeth set into the rim of his ear. Invasive hands pushed around and under his gear. The collision of thin kevlar plating, studs, straps and military fatigues was about as objectively erotic as shuffling papers, but Obito was too tired to move and Kakashi seemed to enjoy motivating him in this way. Eventually, he would turn over to respond, and they flipped around beneath the tarp. 

After some time, Obito emerged to take up his watch, leaving his teammate under the poncho with what little warmth he managed to accumulate there. He shrugged his loosened layers about him and slid his goggles down over his eyes; a little fog built up on the lenses. For the first hour he sat up with the doleful sound of rain on wood, and resisted the urge to crawl back under the makeshift blanket and combine their small heat in other ways. It had only been days since they made -- 

Sex. Obito thought. Since they made sweet passionate -- sex. It wasn’t any wonder why he missed it, really, when he compared his snappy but accommodating roommate to the solemn agent of duty and regulation he worked with. 

When the wan light of dawn brushed the highest branches Obito snapped awake. Dew rolled down his goggles. A gray shape stooped over the huddled form of his sleeping teammate. Red eyes, he thought, and a mane of dark hair. It lifted the edge of the tarp --

“What’s wrong?”

Obito snapped awake again, blinking, half-frozen and puzzled. He lowered the poncho and looked out across the wood, legs aching like they’d jerked into motion over a short distance. Had he just seen -- ? 

Kakashi sat up sleep-ruffled and unshaken. He picked at his tear ducts, then pinched the bridge of his nose like he felt a headache coming on. “You didn’t wake me up.”

How many hours, Obito wondered, had he slept on his watch? Plenty of time for someone or something to rise up from the mists and prey on his teammate. It only took a minute to slit somebody’s throat. Fifteen seconds if you made a habit from it. 

He made a really lousy partner, Obito thought, again, and an even worse soldier. 

“I wasn’t tired.”

His stalker left a sinister reminder like a dark pool on his consciousness, and Obito felt it lapping at his eye holes all morning. Anxiety clawed at the corners of his vision like the shadows of wolves. He was going to fall asleep out here, one night -- and in the morning there wouldn't be enough left of him for a throw rug. 

Obito saw missing pieces of himself rising out of the rootwork. He imagined leaving them behind. 

Soon the 50 pounds of unnecessary gear on his back and the chafe and pull of his person-suit were only faint echoes in the back of his mind. Meditation only worked for Obito when he forced it; if you couldn’t quiet your thoughts, he reasoned, you could at least drown them out. 

Kakashi flickered out of sight sometime in the mid-afternoon and reappeared the moment Obito touched down in the long bow of a bald cypress. He backed him against the smooth gray bark so swiftly it felt like an assault, and Obito threw a fist. Kakashi redirected it with his arm and punched him in the head. 

“What is it?” hissed the Copy Nin. “I can feel you freaking out, ten yards away.”

Obito shook himself. He thought he was doing a pretty good impression of a dumb soldier -- or pack animal, as it were -- up until that moment. 

“I just wanna know,” he began, pulling it together as he went. “Why we’ve been dicking around in this forest for _four days_ and haven’t _got_ anywhere!”

“You want the map? Go ahead, I’ll let you lead the way -- ”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Obito, feeling vicious and unreasonable. “You got us in here, so _you_ get us the fuck out. I’m carrying all the weight, here, so it’d be nice if you could do the same.”

Emotion changed Kakashi’s face as much as a spring breeze over rock. “You’re on high alert,” he said, working his hands under the straps of the first-in bag as he spoke. “If you calmed your ass down, you’d notice we’re not in the Shivering Forest anymore.”

Obito cast furtive glances to his left and right. Trees. Mist like a river. 

He narrowed his eyes. “Is that so?”

“Open your _nose_ , idiot. Stop eyeballing and start earlobing.”

The rushing in his ears was not, as Obito presumed, the sound of his advanced meditative state; there was, in fact, a body of water beneath them. It smelled saliferous, like an estuary or inlet off the sea.

The pack slipped off his shoulders and Obito scowled his relief. “What are we supposed to be looking for out here, anyway? What the fuck’s dis _turbed_ about Tea Country? The worst they’ve got are bandits and bad poetry.”

Kakashi’s eye rolled. “Both are cleverer than you.”

Obito shoved his teammate back a step. “You’re a real comfort.” Then, on a second thought, he advanced on him. “I might have one of those _small_ brains, but even I can spot a hypocrite -- the only reason you think you can manipulate me is because you’re so good at manipulating your _self_.” He shoved him again, and they grappled. 

The prospect of a fight satisfied Obito; it meant he had riled his teammate, and therefore got the better of him in some way. At least, that’s what he told himself, until he botched a tackle and Kakashi hooked him into a guillotine choke. The pack was just enough weight to throw his balance. 

Neither of them would lose, and Obito wrapped his opponent in a kneebar even as they toppled through the air. Kakashi flexed his spider guard, weakened the kneebar to a leglock, and kicked him away. For a split second Obito was drowned in the mists, inhaled thick and faintly sweet the warm vapors, and crashed ass-first into four feet of slick, waterlogged mud. 

They weren’t in the Shivering Forest anymore, he realized. This was some kind of disgusting swamp. 

Even as he extricated himself from the brackish sludge a water margin rose in his place the color of red tea -- darkly stained and acidic. Curious protrusions of wood rose up in ranks around the trunks of surrounding cypress and mangrove trees like roots turned up to the sky instead of the ground: some tall and tapered, others short and knobby. He had missed being impaled by inches. This observation disquieted Obito no more than the bone-white afternoon sun sitting so low in the sky -- or the mud which resembled clotted blood, now covering him shoulder to toes. 

Kakashi landed lightly on the knuckle of one woody spike. Obito pushed up his mud-splattered goggles and peered across the flooded landscape. 

“Look at these things, bro,” he murmured. “Like fingers, coming up outta the soup.”

“A red river,” hummed the Copy Nin. “Well this is… disturbing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little unrelated art (nsfw lol), more from my Tarot series:
> 
>  
> 
>   
>    
> 
> 
> if yall want a little more fool art -- no pressure -- u can check out my ig. @thedivinefool  
> u guys heard schoolboy Qs new album rite >.>


	21. blood wake pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i luh u all so dam much lets make this happen<3
> 
> music in this chappy is what i was listening too while writing, not the usual thing but, then again  
> neither is this chapter

A flush of swampish swill slowly filled and eventually overspilled the imprint of his teammate’s ass in the thick mud. The fragrant odor of the woods grew cloying and sweet the longer the breeze delayed, but the brackish water underfoot smelled distressingly of the fluid inside an M-ration can and Kakashi wrinkled his nose. 

“Get out of there, B.” he ordered mildly. 

Despite the freeze they left behind, and the host of military gear that travelled with them, and despite the fact that you could probably ride into battle on his insecurities, for four whole days Kakashi had struggled to shake his wanton, unrealized, and yet within-reach fantasies of Obito -- his running favorite featured the Uchiha riding him in nothing but goggles and a chain -- and it made the mission at hand seem very far away indeed.

Still, the image of clotted muck and ooze and stringy layers of holdfast decay now clinging to his teammate didn't fit into his sexy Twelve Months of Uchiha calendar at all; in fact it made for a rather heavy-handed reality check.

“Or what?” Obito spat, recalling his own pissy mood like backup protocol.

Kakashi sighed, kneaded at his brow with one hand. “Or a kappa might come along and snatch the soul out your ass.”

“I don’t keep my soul in my ass!”

“And you clearly don’t keep a brain in that fucking _wal_ nut on your shoulders -- get out of there, don’t be a tit.”

Obito wiped his mud-splattered mouth on a muddier forearm. And in a move both of them would come to lament for the rest of their short shinobi lives, he turned his head and spat into the dark pool rising inside his assprint. “Oh, a tit, am I?”

The lowlands were deathly still and the air heavy, but at once the musty fog around the ankles of the cypress trees and their strange upturned roots began to stir. Then came a sound like a haunted old dirge whistling down the distant mountains.

“Obito. Get out of the water.”

“I can’t,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I can’t move.”

Blackwater rose in the post-holes around his legs and Kakashi watched his teammate fall heavily to his knees. Around them the spiked knuckles of cypress and mangrove seemed to grow and taper until they resembled stalagmites reaching for the reddened evening sky. The horizon bowed inward as the river rose; the muddy shallows began to burp and bubble as if from a volcanic heat.

Kakashi took careful stock of his options, but mostly he observed the change come over the land. 

It was not the river rising but a mound emerging from its tea-stained waters -- so large it seemed to drag the landscape about it like a cloak. Kakashi’s ears rushed with the sounds of thick, sulfurous cascades flushing from the emerging figure’s cragged sides. Slowly the rising mound took shape and form -- something between a god and a mountain. Spiked pneumatophores collected on the thing’s lilting shoulders. Redwater spilled from a wide-brimmed dish on its head. 

“ _Welcome… to Jigoku,_ ” came a tremendous, gonging voice. It just barely molded to words. “ _The Many-Layered Hell._ ” The echoes seemed to chase themselves around Kakashi’s head and set his ears popping and ringing with the voice's uncomfortable magnitude. He thought he saw Obito’s eye flicker red, but the copy wheel shattered back to black almost as soon as it formed. His teammate was caught exactly in the thing’s great shadow.

 _”New world samurai...”_ the voice rolled and eddied around them. The trees shook and their winged seeds were sent spinning for refuge only to fall short and speckle the blackwater like unborn offerings. “ _Accept your judgement with dignity, and you shall be cleansed..._ ”

Obito’s chest swelled with a huge breath, and he spat again into the river. The wind moaned its sad song and the mound spoke again -- this time, Kakashi thought, with an undercurrent of rage. 

“ _Sullied by pain, twisted by hate --_ ” it boomed. “ _I find you guilty of slaughter, mutilation, the theft of clan secrets --_ ”

“Fuck off, dumb nuts!”

Kakashi pressed his palm to his forehead. 

“ _I sentence you to Kokujō Jigoku, the Second Layer… Hell of Black Threads!_ ” 

A dull, echoing _clunk_ like a bamboo _shishi-odoshi_ resonated over the land and Kakashi saw a swift-moving soundwake sweep over the whispering waters. The mangroves held their breath. Then again, once more... tip- _clunk!_

Abruptly the surface of the blackwater swamp broke and rippled, as if disturbed by an invisible rain. Kakashi leapt to the knuckle of a different pneumatophore as the water margin rose around them again. 

Only it wasn’t water.

From the flutter of white-crested waves more figures began to materialize in a ring around them -- each higher and wider than human stature, but much lesser in size than the mountainous Judge before them -- and Kakashi couldn’t look directly at them but like their master they appeared deeply shadowed, horned and hideous. A scent like salty old dishwater flooded the bayou, arraigned in the metallic taste of aluminum.

Kakashi blew through some second nature hand-signs and experimented with an earth wall between his immobilized teammate and the looming mud demons, but the jutsu which normally required restraint didn’t cause more than a polite burp in the bog. He was reorganizing his senses, still fleeing root to root to avoid contact with the mysterious crowd and the lurching, tea-stained waters when he felt the prickle of hair rising on the back of his neck -- he clasped his hands around the next wooden spike and allowed himself to slide down a few feet. _Shhhhh -- thunk!_ A thin guff of air heralded the swift arrival of a projectile which sunk three or four inches into the raised knuckle of wood. Kakashi took note of the shadowy throwing ax just as it faded to black like vision spots and disappeared just as swiftly, leaving a deep scar in the root. A flurry of thrown weapons, demonic arrows, darts, blades, and even rocks followed -- forcing the Copy Nin to activate his Sharingan and increase his speed dodging around the pneumatophores. They were driving him further from the circle around Obito.

At a safer distance he paused to regain his breath and sought out his teammate once more. 

“Use your eye!” He called sharply, knowing the Uchiha would've already done it if he could. But Kakashi was as close to a panic as he’d ever been in the last three years -- the fuck was the point of carrying around a pocket dimension in your eyeball if you weren’t going to use it in mortal danger?

Obito lifted his head from his muddied hands, and seemed to make an enormous effort to look back -- Kakashi caught his breath and dug his teeth into his lip. Black lines cut their way over his old friend’s face like a web of cracks over dried paint, carving irreverently over his sars and disappearing under his collar. His Sharingan sparked again, but the red didn’t last. 

“Kakashi -- ” he uttered. “We’re not in Tea Country anymore, are we?”

“ _The threads on your body mark the corruption of your soul,_ ” boomed the shadowed mound. “ _Your skin is rotted, but true wickedness resides within -- my Judgement is final. The oni will hack you to pieces; the_ Kokujō _will sew your body back together, and it will be destroyed again… and again… A day in this Hell lasts one-thousand years. I sentence you, Uchiha Obito... to six-trillion human years…_ ”

Kakashi slid the first-in bag from his shoulders and hurled it as hard as he could into the brush. Then, against his every intuition and the discerning logic of every bit of military and combat wisdom he’d ever acquired -- he leapt. Down into the mud. 

Beneath the surface of the river, an unforeseen supernatural thickness clung to Kakashi’s legs; it was like trying to shift his feet through layers and layers of heavy fabric. He waded against the sludge until his bones felt brittle. The copy wheel spun so wildly it was exhausting him, and time moved miserably slow. Something stung him in the side. A black blade flickered out of sight. Kakashi clapped a hand over the wound, and felt it go numb.

“ _Stop_ ,” said the Judge, thunderous. “ _This is not your Hell, Samurai._ ”

When the mud and morass was sucking at his knees Kakashi could finally see the creature clearly: in the shade of the wide, overfilled dish on its head sat an oversized kappa, like a horned toad in a twelve-layered kimono; the last of its sodden layers spread regally about it, sheer and waterlogged like the platelet skin that builds over an open wound; it was these endless bloody layers which attenuated around his legs and trapped his teammate on his knees.

Obito appeared to be straining hard against something -- the black craquelure over his face hadn’t just stained his skin, it looked like it was digging into him, pulling him apart. When the Uchiha turned again his patch and goggles were gone and both eyes stretched wide like dark pits. He looked like some kind of demon. 

“What’re you, _do_ ing?” He spat. “Bakashi… _run_.”

But there wasn’t any stopping a fully charged Chidori short of unholy cataclysm and certainly no overgrown pile of shit and blood was going to stop the Copy Nin with two handfuls of lightning. 

Kakashi grit his teeth and trudged past his teammate. 

“ _Harrhuuuum!_ ” The voice rose all around, but the mountainous kappa did not move. It seemed almost… amused.

Kakashi had successfully blown bodies through trees with his Chidori -- his opponent was large and unfamiliar but he wasn’t going to hold back or change course at this point, no matter who or what the cost. He understood fear. He understood the value in hesitation, and wasted not a single breath on it. Kakashi forced his reserves into his tangled feet and jumped.

Electricity liked to travel downward. And he knew exactly which point to strike -- 

Neck and neck with the creature, the overflowing dish on its head came fully into view. A moment before his blade fell, Kakashi noticed with equal parts revulsion and dismay that an infant child lay lolling in the bloodbath, alive, bone-white and unblinking. 

With one billion volts in the palm of his hand and a hundred thousand amperes of current destined for the kappa’s vulnerable dishhead, Kakashi slashed downward -- in the midst of it all he had to distantly appreciate the kind of Authentic Shit he and Obito seemed to run into on every single trip beyond the wall. 

  


He didn’t miss. 

But he didn’t make contact, either -- there was no satisfying crunch of the dish under his hand, no touch of the creature’s hard, scaled flesh as he fell. For a moment when their physical boundaries crossed ways, Kakashi felt the same sort of disorienting frame shift as from Obito’s Mangekyō Sharingan. 

“ _KAPPA?_ ” its voice thundered. “ _I am no kappa… see how the lesser demons rise to my call? You are groveling in the mire before_ YAKSHA _, the Eighth Heavenly General, God of the Black Cypress, Guardian of Eight Hole Swamp… Mortal techniques cannot touch me!_ ”

Obito’s head rolled forward. “Yōkai.” He spat again but most of it caught on his chin. “Go eat an ass.”

“ _Yōkai?_ ” roared the red river deity. “ _YŌKAI? Insolent samurai!_ ”

After accusing him of starting shit all these years, it gave Kakashi some thin measure of satisfaction to confirm that Obito had a special talent for it as well. 

But you didn’t taunt a god to catch it off guard, unbalance or anger it -- you did it because all your options were closed and you’d rather go to your grave kicking and spitting. Kakashi looked up from where he’d landed with smoking hands and feet in the mud, and he wondered if his last image of Obito would be like this. Black-veined, black-eyed and snarling. The part of his mind which was not running through doomed battle scenarios one after the other spared a single, feeble thought. _My poor baby._

Kakashi felt a tickle in his left eye. He let it ride. He tasted the breath of a familiar wind over the roof of his mouth -- vapid, sort of dead -- then a speck like distortion began to build over the object of his gaze. He rubbed the eye. When he opened it again, the speck remained. It grew and grew until the space around it seemed to spiral, fold and collapse in on itself. 

The moment before the singularity swallowed him, Obito seemed to realize what was happening. He made eye contact with Kakashi across the river god’s shadow. “Wait, _no -- !_ ”

He disappeared. The black threads tightened on thin air and fell away. 

Kakashi closed his Sharingan eye, abruptly and utterly gassed. He rose to his feet rootless and quivering, picked his way slowly through the mire, and fell to his knees exactly where his teammate had been. 

“Not samurai. We’re,” he murmured, lacking the energy for emotion. “Shinobi.”

“ _...Har-hooum,_ ” the god rumbled appraisingly. “ _I can see you, now --_ ”

Kakashi felt his memories, both past and those unrealized, sifted over and pawed at by careless claws. All his careful locks and keys shredded and discarded -- before the god Yaksha he turned bare-naked, clothed and muddy.

“ _Agent of betrayal, emissary of death…_ ” it rumbled. “ _You have forsaken your forefathers, defiled your code. In your mind I see the filth of lies, lechery, and drink. I will free you from the dual-headed serpents Shame and Ego._ ” 

Distant but unmistakable, the same sound as before:

Tiiip- _clunk_. Tip- _clunk_.

Tiip- _clunk_.

Tip- _CLUNK_ \-- 

“ _Kyōkan Jigoku... the Fourth Layer… the Hell of Screaming._ ” said the Judge. “ _Here the damned shall be cleansed by burning... from the inside, out. One day in this Hell is equivalent to four-thousand years of suffering. I sentence you, Hatake Kakashi, to thirteen-trillion human years..._ ”

The ring of oni that had risen on the outskirts of the Second Layer sank back into the blackwater. Silence reigned. 

Kakashi was dog-tired and drooping but the few layers of his mind which were not trapped in the god dimension were still capable of following protocol. His subconscious stubbornly tried taking stock of its surroundings, but each time he shifted an eye or cocked his head in a new direction, the same exact image of the hulking horned Judge loomed before him. Kakashi looked straight backward into a mirror of the river deity -- unmoving but inescapable. The concept of omnipresence had never left him so utterly hopeless.

“ _Yōkai!_ ” The voice of his teammate, wild with fury. Close, but out of reach of the clinging mud, Kakashi thought. “Touch him and I’ll rip that fucking dish off your head!”

The river deity made another one of its thunderous _Harhoom!_ sounds, as if it were laughing to itself. “ _Why would I touch something... so repulsive?_ ”

Kakashi watched his own body as if aside from it all. His consciousness, peering through a veil, registered that a sinkhole was building between himself and the dark mound, about the width of his shoulders. Dark water rushed into the chasm, and up out of it rose a brazier made from the same tea-stained red clay as the muddy banks of the river. Inside the unglazed pot was a bed of ashes. 

To the Copy Nin’s distant sense of alarm a great claw materialized from somewhere under the sodden kimonos, webbed and knobby like a turtle’s back leg. Kakashi swallowed around some bile that burned his throat. 

One long nail stirred the ashes until they sparked. Lumps of dark charcoal fell from the creature’s palm into the belly of the brazier. Another clawed hand rose dripping from the many-layered folds and placed a teapot over the blaze. The _kama_ was made from iron, round with sloping shoulders. Its lid was a mirror made from bronze.

 _Is this…_ Kakashi thought numbly. _A tea ceremony?_

He felt Obito’s confused and fuming presence behind his back and thought he wouldn’t mind dying this way, after all.

“ _Hrrhuum. Long ago... when the mountains were yet unseasoned… the river was old. Rivers matured the earth by slow degrees, rivers drew up the hills and mountains; rivers carved fertile vales where the land knew only desolation..._ ”

Several items emerged from the slurping swamp while it spoke, some which Kakashi had names for and others which he could only guess at. He recognized a tall ceramic jar with an ivory lid as a _cha-ire_ for holding powdered tea. The short-handle scoop atop it was carved from bone. 

“ _Tea grown in the shade of the Black Cypress was famed in this country…_ ” The Judge idled on while steam rattled the lid of the kettle. “ _Noblemen, generals and priests travelled from faraway places to sit down to tea on its mighty banks. Fish from my waters were prized for their buttery flesh and soft bones -- it was considered a delicacy to eat their eggs whole and alive._ ”

One of the clawed hands extended, holding a tea bowl shiny with several coatings of eye-catching iridescent black lacquer. It was a shallow _cha-wan_ , more suited to summer than the winter they left behind; Kakashi took it in both hands without much thought. He examined the outside and found several imperfections, though the inside was smooth and unmarked, the same color red as the hue on a petal of poison ivy. He handed it back. 

The river deity accepted the bowl and set it down on the surface of the water. With its right claw it lifted the lid on the tea caddy, and with its left it handled the bone scoop. Kakashi wasn’t expecting sencha but the powder which landed in the _cha-wan_ didn’t actually look too far off. A little, gloomier, maybe.

“ _Now fishermen who draw up their nets in these waters collect only dead things…_ ” the creature lamented. “ _Harrhoum! To eat the same flesh which was once so rich is now willful martyrdom…_ ”

In its left claw it produced a long-handled ladle called _hishaku_. It removed the lid from the steaming kettle with its right, and using the _hishaku_ transferred water from the _kama_ into the _cha-wan_. The sencha powder stirred up into a thick cloud. Next the Judge used a rough head whisk carved from a single piece of bamboo to evenly disperse the cloud into the sick red water. 

Kakashi accepted the tea bowl in both hands.

“ _Tell me, Samurai… what kind of animal continues to consume… that which destroys it?_ ”

Kakashi touched the black lacquer to his lips. He beheld the phenomenon around him in bits and pieces.  
Black grass.  
Green horns.  
And everywhere -- that red water.

It was predictably hot on the tongue; the tea burned fitfully past his second and third ribs -- but it was when the scalding heat reached his stomach and multiplied a thousand times over that Kakashi began to yell. The burning was so intense he dreamed of dipping his head in the swamp and ending it all -- but the layers of his folded consciousness which remained aware warned him that there was no dying here until his sentence was served. 

“Kappa piece of _shit!_ Nobody cares about your nature boy woes -- you miss the old days so much, I’ll beat you back into the clay! There won’t be enough left of you for a bag of shitty _mulch!_ ” Obito’s voice broke. Kakashi could feel him freaking out ten yards away. His teammate was rather resourceful, usually, but it seemed the only thoughts he could muster were insults. “And your gross baby, too!” He added.

Kakashi’s third-level consciousness slapped a hand over its brow. 

The Yaksha paused in wiping down the empty tea bowl with a square of linen so waterlogged it appeared to be soaked in blood. “ _Har-khooum..._ ” It disguised the pause. “ _You can see the child?_ ”

Kakashi couldn’t distinguish any eyes on the beast but he felt its attention shift back to him, and he shifted his gaze elsewhere. He’d done a pretty plucky job of keeping the sight of the infant to himself, even tucked away in his own thoughts, but he felt the instant the river deity drew them out. Something wasn't right about it, that was all -- Kakashi had been holding it back to consider their options some more. As usual, military protocol was all but ignored by his teammate.

“ _Humans from the village east used to come here with their children… For my blessing, for auspicious names and marriages… They would make offerings to the Black Cypress, whole roasted pigs, sweet rice wine made from the nectar of the White Birch… but in the human world centuries turned… war ravaged the neutral territory and no tribulation was spared for the river god…_ ”

“So you poisoned the water you petty fuck!”

“ _HARHOOUMM --_ ” The Yaksha boomed. “ _I did… nothing of the sort… For many years even those who paid no tribute and could afford no offering dipped their infant crowns in my depths and emerged favored and joyous… But centuries turned… no more ceremonies… now red lights and gambling houses, drink and debauchery -- human societies churn like beetles in the earth --_ ”

“That’s no excuse!”

“ _New world mothers…_ ” It continued. “ _Come to me from the same village… They immerse their babes in my waters… but they do not lift them. They do not lift them again._ ”

Silence reigned. 

In the old kappa-god’s wide-brimmed hat, the infant lolled back and forth and the red water sloshed. It peered blank-eyed over the edge. Kakashi made glancing eye-contact with the child and felt horror strike him. There was something not right about it, idling in a fount of death -- it was as if the blight itself was peeling from its buttery pale skin. 

Kakashi accepted his second cup of tea.

“No, K, don’t -- don’t drink it!”

He must’ve known Kakashi had no control over it but he still heard his teammate’s howled complaints when the next dose of liquid suffering coated his insides and Kakashi burned and burned and burned. 

The Yaksha hummed long and low. “ _Seems endless, doesn’t it? Each cup is four-hundred years of burning pain. This is a long time for humans. For me, of course, there is no end to it…_ ”

“Okay. Okay, bro. You need to let the baby go -- I mean you gotta give it up, or something,” Obito pleaded. “I think it’s making you sick.”

The creature accepted the return of the tea bowl. “ _I will not surrender the child._ ”

“But it’s already dead!”

Kakashi let his head fall loosely back. Far above him, the infant peered down over the dish's edge with milk-white eyes.

 _Not dead…_ he thought. _It was never alive. It’s a mononoke._

“ _Hrruhkhoum,_ ” bayed the god, as if it heard him. 

“Don’t,” Obito insisted. “Don’t give him another cup.”

The creature hummed again, took its time stirring the ashes in the brazier with one long claw before putting the kettle back on the brazier to boil. 

“ _Foul young Samurai… you who are damned yet somehow evaded my immortal grasp -- I see you, now. I will give you a chance to save your comrade before the_ Kyōkan _takes him. Something festers deep in the seat of the White Birch… Brave the Eight Frozen Hells through which you have already passed… bring me the sap of the withered Guardian. By the last light of this day, the Hellmouth will close again, and all who entered will be lost._ ”

The Judge offered up a third steaming cup. The Copy Nin took it in both hands and lifted it to his lips.

Distantly, he heard the flutter and rush of his teammate taking off, and he couldn’t decide if it was better this way, knowing the demon had lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit, man  
> even the immortals are depressed in this world
> 
> edit  
> contributions and suggestions for k's sexy uchiha calendar are welcome ^^   
> provided obito gets a moody autumn month. August, maybe. or october.


	22. blood wake pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alive! holy writers block.  
> starting this one off w an apology comic --  
> sorry for the overall shoopyness of art quality  
> i just wanna make yall laugh

  
  
  


[blood wake pt. 3](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/blood-wake-pt-3?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

Obito had a very strange experience, in the Shivering Forest alone. 

It was his first solo mission since -- well, since _ever_. He certainly wasn’t busting out C-ranks be _fore_ losing his right nut to abrupt and violent climate change, and Kakashi had been ANBU-babysitting his case ever since re-enlistment last Autumn, so he'd never really been alone on a mission before. Even when the Hokage sent him to stare at fires, it was always together with a cadre of nitwits and small bananas whose collective ninja ability couldn’t neutralize a tricky _cross_ word puzzle -- let alone a grand ass crop fire. Or a haunted forest, or a combat situation, or a pissed off swamp god, or -- 

The point was, Obito had been breathing lousy recycled air since the moment he woke up sixteen, hairy, and uncontrollably hungry.

The crashing sound of his determined trudge faded to a slow step and slop under the trees, and his mind stilled at last. In spite of regulations, Obito was travelling over the forest floor. Layer upon layer of dense, motionless fog hung over his head, and a clingy mist rose from the earth in bone-white tides, pulling weakly at his ankles and sliding over his fingers and wrists. He was several minutes past the nightmare in tea country but still occasionally sloshing through blackwater, his eye was burning and he could hear something. 

An odd, up-down murmuring. A fragment of a child’s cry, or the call of some sinister bird, maybe. Close enough to lift the hair on his arms but difficult to locate -- 

He stopped breathing to listen. Everything fell abruptly silent and even the trees seemed to hush and crowd around to listen. For a second, he imagined they were part of him and the whole Forest was in his brain and the creep noise whistling through the birches was really just -- 

Obito blocked one nostril with the pad of his thumb and fired a snot-rocket out the other. Satisfied that the noise was gone and breathing clearly again, he moved on, making a quick mental note not to tell the guys back in the village that he’d nearly lost his C-rations over a whistling booger. 

It was the first time he’d ever wandered the Fire Country’s border wood without the intention of getting _out_ of it. The cold had already sharpened to blades and every hair on his body lifted in hapless surrender. The sweat-thick heat and damp of the swamp seemed like a memory far in the past. Obito shrugged his coat higher around his ears. He probably cut a strange figure -- geared up for winter and splattered ear to toe in river sludge. But in a way, it felt right. Somehow his stained and dishonored military fatigues and blackened hands wandering the forest alone felt like exactly who Obito was, right now. 

Blackwater turned to bog turned to mud and finally the ground under his feet went dry and knobby. The chill air dried his tongue to moss and in all directions the shifting plains of whitefold fog stretched as far as his eye could reach, dotted in dark towers of black birch -- tangled four and five-layer oldies so thick and mighty that together they formed peaks and ranges of sagging wood flesh, pocked and veined where the skeletal root systems divided and divided again on top of one another. 

A small part of Obito was back home in his room, curled in a ball and crying with only spiders around to hear.

Mostly, regrettably, he was in the present: hand in hand with his doubt and unease, knees fucking knocking pretending everything he saw back there was a bad trip or a vivid nightmare. After all, the real K-dot wouldn’t ever be caught in something silly as a fatalist tea ceremony; he would finesse his ass out of it somehow -- summon his dogs and rend immortal toad bro limb from limb. The _real_ Kakashi would say something fresh as fucking toothpaste breath and slip the noose.

Not this time. This time his teammate was sitting on his ass sipping tea, like a complete shit. And Obito was stuck wandering around the Shivering Forest on a magic nature quest. It was pretty much exactly what he expected from his first solo mission.

He knew by then that the freak forest fed on fear but he had so much of it he didn’t care who wanted a piece. Obito peeled off his gloves and felt his temperamental control slip and collapse. If the trees wanted to bleed him for chakra, suck the heat from his bones, feed on his life energy and leave the eternal cold in its place -- then so be it.

A thick latticework of grasping woody arms blocked out the sky, but he could smell the evening deepening around him, and when the cicadas started up their mourning song, Obito knew he was running out of time. _Last light. Hellmouth._ Who even used words like that. It was category four _bull_ shit and even the lard-ass kappa knew it. The two of them were probably giggling about it between rounds of ceremonial torture; about what an idiot he was. No fairy tree sap was going to set his teammate free. 

He took the bait because he couldn’t fight.

Obito ducked under an arched corridor of roots suspended where the earth had fallen away. He struggled to activate his Sharingan again and failed, again. It felt like he was five years old trying to force it -- grasping at his family’s approval in an unfamiliar element, trying to cup water in his bare hands and show it to someone before it all drained away. Sooner or later his frustration would win out and he’d look for kunai to throw.

Why was it, he wondered, any time anyone actually needed him, he was at his weakest?

Rin. Kakashi, Minato. He couldn’t save his teammates or his sensei or his parents; he damn sure couldn’t save himself. Even when he fought for his pride Obito was doubting every move -- even when he was breaking Fuyumichi’s extra fingers he was thinking the guy’s fire jutsus really _were_ a little hotter than his. 

Doubt was just a shade lighter than his violet, violent shame. 

A _very_ small part of Obito remained far away from the Shivering Forest and even his own turmoil. A part of him was cramped in a busy corner of town eating snail noodles with K after morning training. It was high noon there; the sun and chili oil were making him sweat -- 

Obito snapped out of it like a trance and realized he was almost totally numb, and he’d been following someone for the last -- he didn’t know. Half mile? Ten? How long had he been walking? He cleared his throat. “Uh.”

Two things occurred to him: one, that this mane of hair before him belonged to his stalker; and two, the Sharingan was working again. 

It fizzled out almost as soon as Obito made the observation, and he was abruptly standing alone in complete darkness. 

Light from nowhere illuminated a gray hand attached to a gray arm, and the full form of his stalker emerged. Tangled white hair crowded a pale, emaciated face but Obito registered the man nonetheless as one of his family’s most renowned figureheads, revered by the clan and taught in most village history books as a warrior, a genius -- and some kind of fuck-the-government and back-to-the-holy-land fanatic. Obito recognized Madara by his single visible eye: the eyes, according to legend, he took from the last of his slain siblings. The shape of the Eternal Mangekyō had faded, he noticed. In fact, the pattern seemed warped almost, as if it were beginning to ripple and spiral around itself -- 

The guy looked, totally fuckin’ blind.

“Hate,” his voice wheezed, one half-breath at a time. “The secret of the Sharingan. Harness it, or you will never know strength.”

The gray hand made as if to brush over Obito’s brow, and he felt a ghostly tug but not touch. The copy wheel stirred again, and Obito shrugged away from the influence, unsure. 

“Uh.” He said again. “Shouldn’t you be, like, a hundred and fifty?”

The voice wheezed. “Your math is terrible.”

When he started walking again, Obito went after him, figuring that, if your ancestral spirit guide appears out of nowhere and snaps you out of a forest trance, you might as well follow him… _Where?_ Deeper into the wood.

“Where we are going is not unlike your Kamui.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Obito nodded. “My kam-what?”

“ _Kamui_. A unique rendering of a fragment of space-time: bounded and malleable, yet coterminus with the Prime Multiverse.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your… pocket dimension?”

“Oh! Alright, cool. So the White Birch is in a pocket dimension?”

“So to speak.”

“Just like Jigōku!” Obito felt a thread of hope. “Have you seen it? What's it look like?”

“The tree is…” The voice wheezed. “Beautiful.”

“Am I hallucinating right now?”

“What difference would it make?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know what time it is?”

Madara took a long, labored breath. “You ask, many questions.”

“Yeah, you're not as good at the answers thing. I mean -- you died, right? You die in all the books.”

“Death,” said the old nin, with pale amusement. “Is not always the end. You know this already.”

“Uh,” Obito hummed, matching the leering hollows in passing trees with his own stare. They passed through thick swathes of mist like blindness. “No. See, I’m coma guy. You’re looking for resurrection guy. I didn’t die, I just got hurt. Um, really bad.”

“So it would seem.” Madara paused. Obito eyed the mane of hair and hoped he never went white. “Quite a miraculous recovery,” he wheezed gently, and moved on.

“Look who's talking -- you don’t look dead, not all the way. Just, uh, three-quarters, maybe.” said Obito, scrambling over dips and turns in wood and earth to follow after him. It didn’t make for a leisurely trek. No clear path covered the grand terrain; wooded corridors gave way to vast chamber-halls of trunk pillars and buttresses of branch -- Obito stumbled over a thick root and fell two stories. Some dry mud chipped and fell from his fatigues. The grooved and knotted tree-flesh beneath his hands seemed to vibrate and hum at a low frequency. _Rumm-a-lalla-lalla rum..._ He got up again, peered around the curtain darkness to find the figure of his ancestor in the distance. If his guide got too far ahead, he was afraid the Sharingan would fail, and he would be alone again.

For a walking husk of his former self, Madara could sure move fast. 

“How did you survive?” Obito used the splayed ribs of a fallen beech to mount a steep rise in the landscape, and met with sudden brightness on the other side. 

“We both survived for the same reason.”

The ground stopped near his feet and fell bowl-like into a shallow hollow the size of Green Lake: a treeless glade, flushed with soft light, shining like an arboreal bald spot from the curious thing dead in its center. Obito squinted. Not dead, something living. A white tree -- an upside-down, white tree. 

The guardian of the Shivering Forest was a black birch so layered with age that its outer hide had paled with time into towering folds of ivory. Massive five and six-layer birches stood behind him on the rim of the hollow -- Obito had grown used to their mean and cumbrous presence; and the White Birch made them all look like dry rice noodles. It was ten, twelve -- shit, it could’ve been twenty layers of scarred, splitting bark; he was looking at a tree old as the damn planet. 

So old, apparently, that it had set its roots in the sky. The highest branch of the guardian birch was also its nethermost point; Obito could just make out the gaps in the leaves where it brushed the bottom of the bowl. A cloud of faintly shining yellow leaves formed the tree’s upper crest, so vast it bellied up against the upper canopy of the surrounding right-side up forest.

Madara began to leap his way soundlessly over the barren clearing. The sleeves of his faded cloak fluttered out behind him and it sort of looked like he didn’t have any arms, but Obito knew it was an old school ninja thing to run like that.

Descending into the hollow, he found the floor of the glade covered in dead and decomposing logs; it felt curiously like stomping over a mushy graveyard. Here and there, evidence of root systems crept through the decaying mess -- lively tendrils of wood that twisted around the motionless dead like they were trying to reclaim lost friends.

After what felt like several minutes approaching the center of the glade, the White Birch didn’t seem to get any nearer, only bigger. 

Dust particles not heavy enough to settle hung in breathless suspension around the glade, remnants of centuries of fallen leaves, worked over by bacteria in the soil, combined with oxygen, and cast out. Tiny balloons of microbe poo. They didn’t do anything, really, except bounce light off each other and furry up the back of his throat. Obito coughed noisily. 

  


“I found this place,” Madara’s voice, muffled like he was underwater. “After leaving the carnage at the Valley. I thought I would have to go further, under the mountains -- but the forest has, _pull_ , as you know. And this sapling, it served me well.”

Obito shrugged the first-in pack higher on his shoulders. “I’m not really putting this together, blood.”

Madara’s voice went on murmuring away, but he couldn’t pick out the words.

They alighted at last on the edges of the upturned tree’s halo of gold leaves, and the ground went soft and amber with discarded multitudes. Obito tipped his head back and peered upward, turning his feet slowly in the leafy loam. The ‘sapling’ Madara was referring to was about the size of the goddamn Hokage Tower. Its trunk split deeply around each layer of bark, thick as school buses, and yellowed at the seams and joints like a diseased old femur. 

When his eye fell back to the forest floor, he spotted something out of place: another tree had invaded the guardian’s thrall -- a single black vine that sprung from the ground inside the yellow foliage and twisted its way around the downlifted branches. Obito neared the center column but something locked his step before he got too close. The vague shape of a man was coming out of the parasitic tree-vine. 

He squinted. “Who’s the _nerd?_ ”

“Trophy,” hummed the pale man quietly. “From the Valley at the End. There is an old power here; it was an adequate catalyst for the transplanted flesh of the shinobi god -- ”

“Hashirama?” Obito looked at the face coming out of the dark wood, alarmed. “So, what happened after the Valley? You… you came here? Planted a man-tree?”

Madara brushed aside some of his tangled hair and Obito saw that the old warrior’s right eye was closed. “Once I sacrificed my sight to the Izanagi, the only way to prolong my life was to plant the cell.”

“Then what?”

“I waited for it to take effect. Decades passed.”

“Then what?”

Madara eyed him. His clothing was gray as his skin. Another slow, wheezing breath, then: “Decades.”

Obito chewed his lip. Five _min_ utes in the Shivering Forest made him feel like he was slapping his palms on the floor searching for his last marble -- what would _decades_ do, to a mind already seeded with hatred and loss? Suddenly three years in a coma didn’t sound so bad. Sounded like a damn vacation.

Madara gazed up at the monstrous black vine, and the human visage coming out of it. For a second his murky eye glimmered with obsession, his mouth curled in a delighted sneer. 

“Uncle… ” Obito chose a familial honorific, pitying. “Why would ya do all this? What’s the point?” 

“Peace,” declared the old warrior. “Once I have absorbed enough chakra from the Hashirama clone, the restoration of my eyes will be complete, and the plan may proceed, starting with the summoning of the great Statue -- ”

“Lost me again.” said Obito. “I’m stuck on the sicko tree battery.”

Madara appeared distracted again, and drifted a few steps. The yellow leaves made no sound under his feet. “Am I, too late?”

"Huh?" Obito wiggled a finger in his ear. “Listen, what did you mean, we survived the same way? Kakashi never said anything about plugging me into a tree.”

“The Hashirama, cell,” he answered. “It was the only way to repair your injuries. If only you were not taken to a _facility_ , I would have administered it myself. If not for those, _constant_ , ANBU guards, your training could have started much sooner. As it is, my regeneration has been much slower than expected, and we've lost considerable time on the plan -- ”

Madara paused, and interrupted himself: “Is this, coming together, for you?”

Obito stared at the palm of his right hand, flexed his fingers one at a time, then all at once. “Like buttcheeks, man.” 

His faded ancestor proceeded to describe his plan -- a plan to put an eye in the moon, and make everyone go to sleep, and only have nice dreams. 

It sounded cool for a minute. He got a little lost around the part about putting the Tailed Beasts together, but it sounded cool. For a comic book. Obito was only seventeen but he knew enough about duality to know a world with only nice things would be pretty fuckin’ boring and fake. You didn't need to erase the monsters -- the important thing was finding a balance.

“Too late…” the old man was murmuring. “Am I too late?”

“Huh?” said Obito, with volume. He sneezed on leaf dust. “Too late for what?”

“The extermination of my clan -- ” His eye rippled. “This ceaseless chain of war and reprisal, bloodshed, victory and loss; for all of our hardship, Konohagakure is _bro_ ken. Village society is vicious, material, and corrupt. Your leaders are champions of power and greed, and inside the walls the townspeople buy _mag_ azines and soda pop -- ”

“Oh, man,” Obito chuckled. “You’ve been watching us like porno. Look, I used to feel that way too. Civilization is a work in progress; yeah, it kind of sucks now, but soon all the losers I grew up with will be running the joint, and we’ll do it a lot better. I promise. You should just, take it easy, or something -- ”

“Take it easy, while your shadow leadership leads an attack against our clan!”

“Man, nobody even cares about your stupid blood feud anymore!”

“Because you’re too weak to see it!” He hissed. “If you had seen the things I have, _wit_ nessed the evils that come of free will, you would know we are never truly safe from it -- you would understand the path the Senjus have set us on leads to destruction! Only the Outer Path -- ”

“Uncle,” Obito waved the cultisms away. “Did you ever wonder if, maybe, charging your abilities with hate and idealism might make war a sort of, I don’t know, _self_ -fulfilling prophecy?”

Madara quieted but seemed no less agitated. “Too late,” he kept muttering.

“Too late for _what?_ ”

“I thought… “ The voice wheezed quietly. “You might be a suitable agent, for me, when the time comes...”

Obito almost felt bad for him.

“Too late... I thought... if you saw your first love die -- at the hands of your own teammate -- ”

“Whadda you know about Rin?” Obito snapped. “How long have you been watching me, man?”

“Uchihas only love once -- I thought, eliminate her from the equation, and the rational response is hatred.”

“What?” He rubbed a knuckle into his eye, wiped away the blur of fury. “What?”

“It worked, at first. Your hate awakened the Sharingan, and then, even the Mangekyō -- ”

“And you’re walking around like a blind old mothball, congratulations. Your experiment is fucking up the forest, poisoning the fish, and pissing off overgrown yōkai. I just don't understand _why._ Why would you fuck with my life like that?”

“It was necessary, to prepare you, to show you the way things are -- ”

“The way you _made_ them!” Obito corrected him hoarsely. “Own it! Bitch I don’t even have time for this. I don't know if you've noticed, but, there’s a disturbance in Tea Country, and I’ve got a babe to save -- ”

“How do you plan to fight,” the shade of Madara wheezed. “Without use of your dōjutsu?”

“I -- ” he was about to explain to his ancestor how his battling style was all about making the shit up as he went along, but he was interrupted when a bubble of warning popped in his gut, and Obito caught something aimed for his heart. The force threw him off his feet and sent him skidding on his back in the leaves. 

“I only have enough power for one of these, but -- ”

The sound of Madara's approach was drowned by the buzz and burn of the black rod in his hands. It was still bearing down on him and it took all of Obito’s strength to hold back. 

“One black receiver is more than enough to control the weak-minded,” Madara hummed. “It’s a pity -- I see so much of his energy in you, but the way you are, there’s no hope of controlling it. Give in, child, and I will train you in the way of the Outer Path, come with me and master the Sharingan, and your hidden abilities -- ”

Sweat beaded over Obito's brow as the blunt force of the rod burned through his topcoat. “Uncle,” he sputtered. 

“Yeah, don’t call me that." Madara paused over him like a shadow. “Even in this state -- I am, much, stronger than you. Activate your abilities. Let the curse consume you.”

“Hate didn’t wake my Sharingan, _pain_ did.” Obito grit. “And let me tell ya, I’ve got it in _bar_ rels.”

“That’s it. Remember your loss -- what happiness remains, in this reality? What meaning has duty or honor under a false sovereign?”

Finally Obito felt the pop and dull _crunk_ of a rib giving way under the rod. He tried to access his Sharingan again and failed. The weight of Madara’s convictions was blowing the admittedly thin doors off his concentration. “That’s just… part of being shinobi.” He answered, exertion forcing blood to his face. 

What hope did he have, anyway, fighting a virtual war hero -- albeit an aged and decrepit version of one? The guy was famous for wiping out whole _ar_ mies on the frontlines. Obito -- Obito could complete a highly difficult ropes course. 

“Lies,” Madara offered. “Lies and misdirection. Your Hokage says one thing, and the shadow government does another. Do you even _know_ who your teammate is truly working for?”

“Shut up -- ” Obito snarled. Pain strangled his words. “I might be weaker than you, but something in your mind, Uncle, it’s broken. This isn’t the path to peace either.”

With blood bubbling in the back of his throat he threw the weight of his willpower against the rod. It didn’t budge, not forward or backward. 

Madara laughed. It was long and cruel and it sketched Obito out _big_ time because it didn’t even seem like him anymore -- like something dark and otherworldly had been incarnated in his place. Or maybe it had always been there, waiting for the right circumstances to rise. 

Obito shifted his eye away from the rod and onto the old warrior directing it. Before he could blink twice around the sweat circling his eyes, a pale root ripped out of the earth and sliced Madara in half. 

The gray form shuddered once and reformed, still whole, but the laughter stuttered to a halt. “But,” he murmured. “You have no training in his kekkai genkai.”

 _No_ , Obito thought. He didn’t. But he’d been growing little flowers for months now. Something was bound to happen.

Around him the wood hummed its peculiar frequency. _A-lalla-lalla-burúmē…_ Obito listened. He made a quick deduction. 

The next root lifted out of the ground around the White Birch’s center column and swung like a wood hammer for the body of the Hashirama tree.

“No, wait!”

The impact sent a wave through the suspended currents of dust and the guardian seemed to rustle its high leaves in applause. 

Madara’s gray shade vanished.  
The black rod disintegrated in Obito’s hands.  
_A-lalla-rummmmm_ , the wood sang.

Clamping one fist over the blunt force wound in his chest, he rolled to his feet and crossed the glade in lurching steps. This time he came within spitting distance of the flesh tree -- close enough to pick out the details in its trunk, the places where its vine-like branches reached out for the guardian wood and twisted and choked -- not so close he could get grabbed, though. Obito had seen _that_ happen before. 

A fissure in the trunk caught his eye and confirmed his hunch. Inside the gap in the bark, intermingled with the tissues of the Hashirama tree, Obito could still recognize the true body of his ancestor. Motionless but for the movement of his eyes and lips. “Too late?” His weak voice, just the same. “Am I too late?”

Dude was a skipping beat. 

Obito’s blind attack on the vine had struck the trunk horizontally and crushed the supports around Madara’s midriff. Round two of life in the ring was looking pretty bleak for the old shinobi. It was apparent to Obito that he was out of time, and quite out of his faculties. Decades under the Shivering Forest’s creeping chilling influence was too much -- and linked up to the White Birch as a catalyst, who knew what kind of space cola he’d been drinking, all these years.

“I guess you are too late,” Obito decided. “I’ve been asleep for a long time, but. It’s over, bud. Time to wake the fuck up.”

“Irrational,” the cocooned Madara murmured, with effort. “There is nothing left to salvage, on this path. The village failed, friends betrayed, we saw our loved ones slaughtered. Uchihas only love once -- ”

Obito waved his free hand around, dissipated the monologue like a bad smell. “Heard you the first time, man, and it’s still bullshit.” He nodded to himself, then shrugged. “Love will grow anywhere. It’s just a matter of, you know, making a place for it, and letting it get tall. I know Rin is g -- Rin is dead. And I know _you_ had your fucking fingers in it, somehow. You wrecked a good friendship and my first chance at a close relationship -- but I’ve got news for you, Uncle, you’re not a god. You talk about winning and losing like you’re above it all but that’s exactly what all of this is about, isn’t it? _Win_ ning.” Obito spat. It hit the base of the tree and dribbled a bit. Madara’s blurred eyes rippled. “You lost this time. You’re too late. You didn’t steal all the happiness out of my life; let’s be real, dog, you wouldn’t even know what happiness looks like. And I don’t have time to make you _move on_ because, again. Disturbance in Tea Country. My teammate needs me.”

“Weak,” a wheeze, a hiss. “I will find another agent, one who shares my ideals, an Uchiha who has at least mastered their own _Sharingan!_ ”

“Bitch, it’s been a long day!” Obito’s temper flared -- the heat seeped out his chest wound and a cool weight on his neck kept his head straight while he started throwing hand-signs. Ram, Horse, Boar. He knew it was traditionally earth-oriented but it felt right so Obito went ahead and channeled his chakra through the sign of the Dog, too. The woody hum under his feet was so strong all of his senses attuned to it -- the White Birch found his small potential for mokuton and seized on it.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“This experiment ends here.”

For the first time since he woke up last Autumn, Obito felt totally symmetrical. The bits of shinobi god warring with his personal demons arrived at a sort of a precarious balance; symmetry spread warm over the dividing line of his soul. He inhaled a century of lost breath, forced it out through his nose and felt complete certainty in his abilities.

“I’m going to light you on fire, homie.” He promised. “And if we were closer to town, I’d invite all the neighborhood kids to come by and beat you with sticks.”

“If you harm the tree, I will cease to regenerate -- ”

“You’re a smart guy, Uncle. You’ll figure something out.” 

With several loud pops and snaps and a huge ripping lurch, the aged, partially regenerated version of Madara started to emerge from the fissure. Obito set his feet in a wide horse-stance, his hands in the sign of the Tiger -- and he watched the husk of his ancestor abandon at once his mindless Hashirama clone and the odds of victory. 

The Forest’s chant rose like an awful song in his heart, and Obito felt his reserves growing faster than he could deplete them. Before, he might’ve described his fireball technique as filling up his lungs with all the kneaded chakra he could muster. This time, Obito filled his lungs, a portal opened in his stomach to a world of living flame and when he blew it was endless.

The vine shrieked and faintly whined as the moisture in its wood superheated and fire devoured the oxygen in its twisted bark. Long petals of orange flame flecked in flickering black bloomed around the dark flowering tree, licked over its twisted trunk and closed around it, slow and grand. The living effigy of Hashirama burned. 

“You’ve ruined everything.”

Obito shrugged. If Madara wasn’t going to be creative with his last breaths, then he wasn’t going to humor the old jerk. “Teenagers, man.”

Then, something else occurred to him. 

“I’m going to leave you here,” he said. “The Forest wants to eat you. It seems fair. Your corpse will lay like a log in the guardian’s graveyard alongside everyone else who tried to use it for personal gain. But first -- ” 

Obito stooped over the husk of his ancestor, poised the index and middle fingers of his right hand under his brow and his thumb under the soft curvature of his left eye. “I’m going to take something of yours. I don’t think it ever really belonged to you, anyway.”

Some of the gold dust had burned to ash in the wake of Obito’s fire flower and it fell in soft gray heaps on the silent glade. A small part of him was far away, wondering how in the _hell_ he was going to write up a report on this for Lieutenant Colonel Dusky. 

Finally Obito turned his back on the White Birch and trudged back to the edge of its leafy corona. He toed at the distance between himself and his destination. The energy in the pocket glade dimension was soft and malleable; he could almost feel it -- the fabric of space-time slipping through his fingers. Obito grasped it, and pulled.

He didn't have another second to waste on introspection.

This time when he accessed Kamui it didn’t bleed over it _snapped_ to. No stumble and hurl but rather a resounding _warp_ and a pressure through his chest like a spear. He was learning to breathe again, Obito thought. With a different set of lungs -- becoming accustomed to the metaphysical by tuning new muscles. For an instant, he felt like a god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> fudgy, i know. so much timeline fudge.  
> 


End file.
